Category: Podcast Episodes

Welcome to the March edition of Coaching Moments with
Ryan D’Aprile!

If you listened to last month’s Coaching Moments, you know that Ryan D’April of D’Aprile Properties spent a full hour on lead generation. We had such an overwhelming response from our listeners that this month he spent another full hour answering your questions! Don’t worry if you missed the last episode – you can jump right in with this one. Ryan has coached (and continues to coach) some of the top brokers in Chicago, and his methods are simple and effective. If you’re a broker looking to increase your production by even one deal a month, you NEED to listen to this episode.

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers also for brokers all over the country because we are starting to get more traction and people from many different states have written into us. So I know it’s not just local, but we are interviewing and talking with local brokers here. We only talked to the top 1% If you’re a new listener, this is coaching moments with Ryan’s APR. And this is a really super fun series that we do. Ryan comes on every single month, and Ryan’s passion is coaching. By the way, if you’re not familiar with Ryan, let me give you a little bit of information. Here, Ryan, April’s a progressive thought leader, he’s focused on providing for his agents and staff in particular, Ryan’s passion is coaching. His strengths are motivational skills, his coaching style and dedication to training. And what I want to mention is Ryan has a visit right? You have 13 offices, is that right? Yes. Yeah, so write us 13 offices, several 100 brokers. And Ryan spends the vast majority of his time traveling from office to office coaching his brokers. So we’re so honored that he spends time every month doing that here for the 1000s of listeners we have so and by the way, Ryan is also on vacation. So this is primetime that he is taking away from his family to do this for you. So on behalf of all the listeners, Ryan, thank you and welcome.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:15
It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much. Yes, I’m down here in sunny Miami. It’s in it’s fantastic, by the way, because I think of where we are when I left I think was about 25 degrees, what’s the temperature there now?

D.J. Paris 2:25
It is 30. And we haven’t seen we haven’t seen the sun in about four days. So that’s it’s pretty much missing.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:33
You know what I’m, I’m overlooking the intercoastal right now looking at some boats and pool and palm trees. And it’s fantastic. But I gotta tell you something, TJ, there’s no place like home. And as great as Miami is, and I love Miami, I mandu. I love Chicago as well. And it’s all about your perspective and how you put it. So it’s great to be here, but it’s not. So we’re really fortunate to live in such an awesome city.

D.J. Paris 2:53
That’s true. My parents had a place on the intercoastal. We’ve actually just sold it. They had it for many, many years in Myrtle Beach. I think the intercoastal is the largest manmade body of water in the world. There’s something unusual about the intercoastal. So if you’re listening, you don’t know what it is google it is super interesting had to do with I think World War One when it was built out. Yeah, there’s a way to get moved and supplies up and down the coast. But anyway, so let’s get in today. So Ryan and I were talking offline and we we wanted to come up with with an improvement to our series. It’s already great because Ryan’s on it. But we thought he gave he was just true. We the feedback we’ve received has been so incredibly positive and strong that that we’re very, very excited that Ryan’s a part of this. And what we thought would be really interesting and helpful was, for example, on the last podcast Ryan did and I’ll post links to those if you first time listening, you should go back and listen to the other two that we’ve done thus far. But there was so much great content that I think there’s a lot of questions that we just didn’t get to as a result of people listening. So in the last episode, right, well, let’s go all the way back to the first episode. The first episode Ryan really talked about setting up your day, your morning routine, how do you set yourself up for success to dealing with mindset habits, behaviors, etc. And then last episode, Ryan talked all about really prospecting relationship building, how do you actually build your business? A lot about marketing campaigns, and really, really getting into into the weeds in a good way. Specifically granularly about you know, how do you what constitutes a lead? What are the different marketing campaigns? How do you know separate out your contact list, etc. So I thought what we would do is, every other episode, we would go back to the previous episode with questions. So this way, Ryan can get even deeper. And so what I will ask you to do here in just a moment, is right we’ll get into these questions, but I’ll ask the listeners to send us your questions. So if you listen to these and you want to hear from someone like Ryan, who is a very well respected thought leader, send us your questions. You can do that on Facebook, our website, million Ways to get us that stuff.

Ryan D’Aprile 5:01
Yeah, send them in. I mean, it’s there’s so many questions that pop up in people’s day to day activities, you guys send them in, we’ll be happy to cover them. There are, there’s no silly questions, if it’s just something that you might shoot it over and DJ will cover it.

D.J. Paris 5:17
Yeah, and pretty much everything I’ve learned in my life has just been through tremendous, a lot of asking a lot of questions.

Ryan D’Aprile 5:24
DJ, what we’ll do, we’ll keep the questions anonymous, so nobody has to feel like they’re going to be exposed if they’re nervous about sending out a question, mentioned that people’s name.

D.J. Paris 5:30
Very good point. Thank you for mentioning that. Okay, so let’s start to go through some of these questions. We talked a lot about one of the constant themes has been in the different episodes we’ve done is how consistency is the mother of skill, repetition, and building those, those have those daily habits, weekly habits, etc. Now, assuming brokers took your advice from the previous episode, which was all about how to find people that need your services, and they really started to implement those daily habits and reaching out staying in touch, etc. How quickly in your experience, and I know this, this can vary, of course, but how quickly does a broker start to see results as far as actually finding clients from that from doing those efforts? So,

Ryan D’Aprile 6:18
you know, it can vary on the it could depend on their time, their tenure in the business? Sure. So, um, I’ve had agents, majority of our company, one thing that I’m incredibly proud of, and it’s interesting, you know, innovation, you know, comes from need and, and one of the reasons our company has grown, is that we are not an organization of recruiting agents from other companies. Right. You know, there’s, quote unquote disruptors out there, sure. And essentially, they’re paying money for high agents and producing agents to come over Yes, I’ve had a lot of agents from my company get recruited out by leading real estate companies in our area, because of just higher commission splits and paying for them. And we haven’t had that luxury, we bootstrapped our organization, like I told you, DJ before the call. And what I’ve had to do over the past eight years, is bring people from that in the industry, and coach them all right, and of our 400 agents, 95% of them, were probably not licensed five years ago. And there’s some of the top producing real estate agents in Chicagoland and agents that get plucked away from our company, I’ve actually learned to be proud of is there some of the top top producing agents and those other companies, and they’re highlighted, and they’re rewarded. And, and I’m proud of that, because they were not in the business prior or they had been for a while. And they just didn’t kind of have a focus on what needed to be. And a lot of it was perspective of, this is what you’re going to do, and it’s going to take time. So that was a long winded, and I have a tendency to do that. But to tell you the experiences, I have people that have never been in the business, I people have been in the business for, you know, three, four or five years, something even a decade. And the timing is different based upon the tenure. So for somebody who’s brand new has never been in the business before, to follow the system, and you fall to a tee, it’s the first 12 months is going to be laying the foundation, sure, you’re not going to see a lot of results. And it’s like a plant germinating underground. So you’re not going to see anything but underground, there’s a ton of stuff happening. And it’s a second 12 months that you start to see the results. Okay. And then it’s the third full month, the third year, where what you did in your second year, which is, which will be a phenomenal amount of business, you’ll actually double it in your third year, but you got to follow the system. Now there are agents who have been in the business for three, four or five years, I’ve seen it happen in three to six months, surely off for them, because they have a foundation, they have a network, the network has a vague familiarity with them, and that they’re in the real estate business, they just have not been consistent in their activities and what they need to do. And I found it’s a three, four or five, six months of them doing it. They’ve gotten they’re getting tremendous results. They’re just they’re thrilled with so but that being said, Everybody’s struggling in those one to three months, or those first 12 months. And what they’re struggling with is the emotional factor that they have people compare themselves. I have agents that have not been in the business for, you know, eight months, and they’re comparing themselves to top producers. And I say, Listen, don’t do that. You got to give yourself time. Everybody has a starting block. And it’s just, it’s the biggest, the biggest. What’s the word I’m looking for? thing that will take somebody off shore their path is ego and self doubt. And and what they’re doing is they’re looking outside and they’re comparing, and they just can’t do that. Yeah, there’s

D.J. Paris 9:43
a great expression that says never compare your insides with someone else’s outsides.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:50
That’s right. That’s the truth. And a comparison is the thief of joy. And we all do it. I’m sure you do it. But you got to have that environment and I’m I think for individuals in the real estate business, coaching is incredibly important. And whether you get it at your company or you get it from an outside vendor, it’s important because you need that second or even third set of eyes to keep you focused on what you need to do. And then also keep you encouraged and to remind, you know, look at what you’re doing. I know how you feel, look at what you achieve. And it’s kind of that reason.

D.J. Paris 10:24
Yeah, I mean, even our own, the owner of our company, his name’s Nick, he started at Coldwell Banker in I think 2003. And he ended up he wasn’t the Rookie of the Year with Chicago Association, realtors, but he was of the like, top five or something. And so I asked him years ago, when I started working for Nick, I said, Hey, you had an amazing first year back in 2003, how much you started currency, how much production did you actually do? And he goes, Oh, that’s a funny question. He said, I did zero production. For the first six months, he goes, All I was doing was all of laying the groundwork, and just making the calls and doing all the things you’re supposed to do. He goes, then in month seven, I ended up closing seven sales transactions. But if you would have looked at that first six months, he goes, if I would have thought about having zero money I’ve generated I would have felt like a huge failure. And he ended up being one of the top producing rookies. So yes,

Ryan D’Aprile 11:16
right. Well, you know, that’s, that’s I’ll draw it because it’s funny. That’s actually the same year I got in the best Yeah, was 2003. And I tell everybody who is new to the business or whatnot, it takes us time we go over it. Okay, you’ve been in the business for five years, you get the results you want, here’s the timing is going to be okay. You’re brand new. Well, let me tell you about my experience when I was brand new, and I had I had a career, I was an executive search. I got my license in January 2003. It wasn’t until July of 2004, that I quit my career, and became a quote unquote, full time real estate agents. And anybody and everybody could do it. I mean, 2003, I had a daughter, I had a wife, I had a mortgage, I had, I was working probably 45 to 50 hours a week, do an executive search, I was going oh my gosh, at night to get my MBA, and I travel maybe once or twice every other week for my business, the executive search business that I was in, but at the same time, over 18 months, I was able to lay a foundation. And that set me up to walk away, and I never looked back. And DJ three years later in July 2007 was July or July 2004, three years, laters, July 2007, with the great recession. And you want something I didn’t skip a beat in 2000 789 10. They were I’ve told people this over and over again. Sometimes I’m tired of hearing myself speak because I’m repeating. But it’s just how people learn. It’s like, those were great years. For me, it was terrible what people were going through. And there was a lot of emotional stress, seeing friends and family and colleagues and clients that we were doing a ton of short sales for and helping them through the business. But for me as a real estate agent, our business was plentiful, it was all around. It was there, then it’s there today. But it’s about living in abundance versus scarcity, which is, you know, you have these conversations, we talk about this, we read books, we listen to podcasts. But man, this is not a one and done thing. It’s like you have to go to the gym, you gotta go to the mental gym, every single day to check yourself, especially if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, which real estate agents and loan officers. We are entrepreneurs. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 13:21
And don’t step on the scale every day and look at the number right like stop judging your daily performance judge the work you’ve done, don’t judge the results, the results, you know, this is a well trodden path. The path to success in this industry has been well documented. It’s same with with fitness, same same with really any part of life, you know, people have figured this out already. But if you just gotta keep doing it,

Ryan D’Aprile 13:46
it’s so true. It’s and it’s so great. I love when we as we coach people, we learn from the people we’re coaching. And I’m gonna reference one of our agents, his name’s Mark, play sec. And he was one of the agents that I saw. In the beginning parts of me coaching him was like 30 to 60 days, he taught me a very valuable lesson, I have what’s called the dashboard we have with this snapshot. And Mark said, Can we do me a favor? Can we not look at my goal, and we can’t look at my results? Can we just focus on it? That’s, that’s awesome. I said, Yes, Mark? Absolutely. We can. In fact, Mark, I’m gonna steal that from you and just use my future coaching, if you don’t mind. And that’s the beautiful thing about the business and being in what we do is you can learn from everybody and anybody regardless of title. Yeah, great.

D.J. Paris 14:25
What are your thoughts about finding an accountability partner, someone that is, you know, probably on the same path as you who wants to do a lot of daily activity. And, you know, we know famously if you’re Brian Buffini fan, he had Joanie ago, and they were accountability partners. What are your thoughts on that? My name is Joe. That’s funny.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:45
Yeah, it’s randomly Yeah, we’ve never met but he lives in my in my neighborhood. Um, it’s important. I mean, and they you don’t have to, they don’t have to have the same tenure. They don’t even need to be the same business if they understand the concept of what you’re trying to achieve. And it’s focus on self improvement, working on the activities that you need to be doing and staying accountable. I think everybody will benefit from an accountability partner. I think everybody needs an accountability partner in the business that we are, we are in. But it’s important. The countability partner is discipline. Because there are so many distractions in our business. And there’s all these new things, right? There’s this new digital, there’s this new lead generation app, there’s this new this and there’s news that you’re really, you really have to focus on somebody who understands the fundamentals. And you have to understand what the fundamentals are, and then commit to each other saying, let’s stay focused on what’s tried and true. Let everybody else all the disruptors and technology and let everybody else prove it out and see what happens 10 years from now, or five years from now, or even three years from now, if we have to shift gears, and let’s just measure the results we have, and what we’re gonna do over the next 12 to 24 months. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 15:58
if you if you’re not sure how to find an accountability partner, and obviously, the most obvious example is if you work in an office where there’s other brokers, you know, that should be one possible source. Or if you’re a member of association, which everyone who’s listening probably as a member of car, Main Street or short Barrington, you know, one of the association’s, they have all sorts of events and where brokers come and hang out, and, you know, the YPN is, is another organization where lots of brokers go to learn, you know, that would be a place to go and just start meeting brokers saying, hey, I need somebody that can I can do a daily check in about my activity. And hopefully, we have similar, you know, goals around habits, and you can find people there out there. Absolutely. Let’s go back to the let’s say, You’re a newer broker, or or maybe not newer, but somebody who is, you know, has it’s a slow period right now, we know that the sales markets a little bit slower currently, maybe the calls aren’t coming in as frequently. So aside from the daily activity that we talked about, on the last two episodes, what else? You know, what are your? How much of your day should be spent marketing if you have no clients currently to service?

Ryan D’Aprile 17:11
So it’s a great question. So marketing, marketing should not be that complicated or difficult or even time consuming. I am very what’s the word I’m looking for? Marketing should be a campaign and should be combination of direct mail, email, digital social, it also probably should not take more than an hour to two a month right to achieve. What you should be focusing on right is the relationship building activities.

D.J. Paris 17:45
So how much of someone’s day should be spent trying to get face to face in front of people to talk about possibly assisting them or letting them know what they do? Well, let’s talk about that.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:57
And let’s talk about face to face and doesn’t have to be face to face. That’s that’s one, right. And DJ doesn’t have to be talking about assisting them, right? That’s too true. So if we go back to the theory that 16% of our network has a need of buying and selling a home every year, right? And then everybody in our network knows, at least for people who are buying or selling every year, what the focus needs, to be honest, is how well these people know who you are. Do they like you? And do they trust you? Right? Because in our business, which is a high level, consulting business, you know, focusing on a lot of emotional intelligence, taking people through the transaction of a homesale. They want to work with somebody that they know, like, and trust and like, anybody, everybody, I mean, life is coming, you know, at us at at a wicked rapid speed. And so sometimes they work with a real estate agent that they’ve never met before, just because that person was right in front of them at the time. I think it’s takes people I believe, it takes anywhere from six to to 18 months for somebody to purchase a home, but they pick a real estate agent and one to three days. Right. And so how much time do you need to be focused on the relationship building? Is is the question. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 19:11
And here’s then oh, God, I’m sorry. No, go ahead. I was gonna say, here’s a really hyper specific example, if people are thinking, Okay, well, that’s great. I, and I have this contact list. And I don’t want to call and pitch what I do, because nobody really is interested in hearing me say that. I’m also you know, I’m a realtor, and I can help you, how can I provide more value to them? You know, here’s a really timely example. So, and I sent this to our own brokers, I don’t know how many of them did it. But if it was, if I was out there producing and I was not that busy. Even if I was busy, this is a great way to add value. You could in goes to Ryan’s question, does this have to be face to face? No. So here’s what you can do. You could call up everybody you know who’s a homeowner and say, Hey, I don’t know your mortgage situation. Obviously, it’s none of my business. But I don’t know if you’re aware, but mortgage rates have actually dropped. It may be a good time. I don’t know if it is for you or not, but to consider refinancing and if your mortgage person hasn’t contacted you, you may want to reach out just to see if it’s an opportunity to refi. If you don’t have a good mortgage lender, I can certainly pass over. But I just was thinking about you thought that might be of use. That is a huge amount of value you can bring to somebody right now and gives you a reason to pick up the phone.

Ryan D’Aprile 20:19
Yeah, so in here’s another technique that I like, I like to look at it as your network as a whole. And you need to see your network, you have to stop and write down your network, type it out. Visual, and so you could see it and then you have to count it out and figure it out. Now, you need to have certain information on your network and who they are. If they have a partner or significant other or a husband and wife, you probably should know who that person is and should have that written down. Right? You should know their home address. Yes, regardless if they own or rent, right. During the real estate business, that should be your number one priority is finding

D.J. Paris 20:52
out Yes. Know, their birthdays know if they have children. No, you know how old the children are all sorts of things.

Ryan D’Aprile 21:00
So start with that. And then you say, Okay, well, what’s the number? And let’s just say there’s 200 people on your network, right? Okay. Well, now let’s, let’s look at our, let’s look at this as a career. And I’m going to work Monday through Friday work, maybe nine to five, right? That’s what we do when we get a job. So we’re going to time block, and we’re going to set out an agenda I’m going to follow I’m saying, okay, there is approximately 63 working days in a quarter. Okay, so we’re not counting Saturday, we’re not counting 73 month quarter just about practicing 63 working right? You take your network divided by 63. And it comes out to approximately I’m going to round up running up. For for context today. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 21:39
it’s not not terribly difficult.

Ryan D’Aprile 21:42
It’s not, and it’s imperative that it’s done. You know, and if you skip a day, fine, it’s eight. But that’s your job, right? That’s what you need to do. And it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s so easy to get distracted in this business with the newest trends and technology. And well, this is a, I’m gonna go make a Facebook video, which is great, do it. But don’t forget what your job is right, and your sleeves can be rolled up. And you need to be getting into the relationship, building techniques of your network, in which we’ve said before, you should be at least in touch with them four times a year, at least. So and then the other thing is realize that, you know, there’s so many coaching platforms out there for everybody, and techniques and closing techniques and, and overcoming objectives and whatnot. And I look at my network, and I’m like, I’m not closing these people. I’m not selling them, you know, I’m not going to overcome them. They’re not out there to win something, right? I’m there to solve. And the first thing to do is earn their trust, yes. And the only way you’re going to earn their trust is over time, 12 months, right? And 24 months, and that gets better. Because what you’re doing is you’re reaching out and you’re creating a relationship, a bond, and you’re somebody that can relate to you happen to be in the real estate business. And you’re good at what you do. And you care about these people. You love them, right? They’re important. They’re your network. So when the need comes, they’re going to reach out to you. And guess what, you do not need any closing technique, right? You don’t have to come over any objectives, right? Because you’re not selling.

D.J. Paris 23:17
I have a I have a friend who’s who’s an entrepreneur, who is just now getting into the real estate business. And he’s a he’s a tech guy. And he said, you know, because I figured out and this is going to be no surprise to you. And this is more of after the sale. He said brokers, you know, largely do not do a great job, generally speaking, of staying in touch after the sale, right? Because it’s maybe you know, before that particular individual needs to use your services, again, might be, you know, God knows how many years. So oftentimes, people buy or sell a home, and then maybe they get sort of forgotten about by the realtor. So he created software that he’s working on developing that basically sends out push notifications to like the home these will be for homebuyers that say hey, now that you’ve just bought in particular first time homebuyers that you’ve just bought your first home, here’s when you need to worry about changing your filters on your furnace and about you know, things like that, that really, the realtor could could schedule into their day and say, okay, in four months, I’m going to call teenagers. Of course

Ryan D’Aprile 24:13
they need to it’s their job. Yeah, these people just made the biggest life purchase or biggest purchase of their life. And you are not to go radio sound right? You are you You and we have in our in our what we call our dashboard. In our closed tabs, you have a responsibility call. And I’m saying call them nine times at least nine times after the close transactions. How are you Everything okay? Do you need anything? And I’m not going to worry about what they’re thinking cuz most agents don’t come up with objectives. Well, what are they gonna think? You’re gonna think you care, right? Because you do right? And there is a lot that goes on. And you have to call them and let them know that you’re there and I tell you, this isn’t something I invent Did you know I’m gonna give credit to speech that wasn’t even there? One of my agents told me about it. You we know the name Mario. Sure.

D.J. Paris 25:06
Very and he’s gonna be a guest on the show coming up very soon.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:10
Fantastic. I’ve never met Mario Greco. And I’ve never seen Mario Greco speak. But one of my agents did. And they came back and they said, you know, Mario said something very interesting. He’s got a team. He’s got a team of buyer’s agents. And he doesn’t even work with the clients. But after the closing Myro forces himself to call the consumer six to nine times after in any think he made the either I drew the conclusion, my own brain if he had said this, an agent told me I don’t exactly remember what that client is. Now, Mario’s again, even though another agent on his team worked with him, he does such a good job of staying in contact with that past client, even though he wasn’t the agent. His team was when he was an agent. He focuses on what’s important, when let’s look at where he is, right? All right.

D.J. Paris 25:57
He’s a struggling real estate agent. Super struggling. It’s funny. So a couple of months ago, he had he had written us out of the blue, and he goes, Hey, I think he was trying to be funny. He was like, How come you jerk check. And he didn’t say it this way. But he was being cute. She’s not gonna be jerks. haven’t interviewed me yet. And we went, Oh, believe me, we’re dying to interview you. And he he was really funny about it. So he was actually just at the event you and I were talking about as one of the speakers. But yeah, so there’s a reason why people like that are so successful. And it’s not by accident.

Ryan D’Aprile 26:27
When it’s it is in its in its prioritizing. So when I coach our agents, I ask them, Is this a priority? You know, you have to ask yourself every morning, what’s the priority in your network is your net worth, right? And what most people are doing is 90% of the real estate agents that are selling 10% of the real estate, is they’re not prioritizing your day, and what’s important, and the 10% of the real estate agents that are selling 90% Of all the real estate, they’re prioritizing, and they’re focused on attracting sales, not chasing sales, and they’re doing it through relationship building techniques. Not closing techniques.

D.J. Paris 27:09
Yeah, I think if you if you go approach it from the perspective of what value can I bring to my contact list or to anyone I come in contact with? What value can I bring, you will be so incredibly valuable and sought out you’ll never have to do what’s that cheesy line that use that that is taught, which I hate, which is I’m never too busy for your referrals, you will never have to say that. You know, because you’re you’re so I’ll tell you, you know that like people like Ryan, I’m speaking now, just to the audience directly. Look, Carrie McCormick comes on the show once a month, she is the 19th highest producing realtor over the last 12 months out of 40,000 Realtors in Chicago, she is beyond too busy to do this. She’s a one woman shop, there’s no team there. She’s an incredible in AI and she comes on every month and goes how can I add value to your listeners? Now? Does that directly benefit Carrie? I don’t know. Maybe she gets clients from it. Maybe she doesn’t, I really don’t know. But she provides so much value that she is known in this industry as somebody who is obviously very knowledgeable. But you know, a Joel shop from guaranteed rate came up to me at a con a thing we were at. He goes I have to be on your show, I have so much to say about lending, I won’t even promote guarantee, I just want to talk because brokers need to know certain things they don’t know, people like Ryan come on every month for that, you know, take time out of his vacation, these people become so incredibly valuable. They don’t ever have to ask for business.

Ryan D’Aprile 28:32
It’s true. And it’s it’s sad. It’s understanding the more you give, the more you get, and you become addicted to it. Because what you do is you’re you’re actually caring about other individuals in our industry. There’s like, there’s no competition. We you know, we are there’s no competition, right? We’re our own competition, and go talk to any successful real estate agent, there might be an exception here and there. Sure, almost all of them are going to be kind and willing to give their time and help out because they understand that there’s abundance. There’s more than enough. I’ve heard people say to me, in the past, and they say, Well, I don’t want to compete with a managing broker who sells. And my thoughts of that is like, well, you can’t compete with your manager broker because your managing broker has their own network, just like you have your own network. And you just have to understand the fundamentals of the business. And now, I do understand the managing broker not selling so they could be there to support you. I’m 100% behind that me too. Right, right. So I get that and, and create a support and environment where people who are agents and an organization have the time to go and they get the resources they need. But my point is, is that there’s no competition because everybody has their own network. Are you going to bump into people who have crossovers and networks? Yeah, sure what you’re going to capture 75% 100% We’re going to capture 75% and 75 percent is enough. You know, and I think we have to realize, what is our why, why did we get in this business and a lot of people is like, I want to work for myself, I want to be able to come and go, I want to, you know, I want to have purpose and fulfillment. And so Okay, well, great, well, then if you look within yourself and your network, you’re going to find out that there is enough there to give you what you’re looking for, and your why and what you why you got into this business, if that makes

D.J. Paris 30:27
sense. Makes Perfect. Makes perfect sense. I want to switch gears and talk about a very specific question that that I have for you, because I’m curious. And I know you have your own proprietary software you’ve built for coaching for your team, or your brokers. What are there any techniques? Are there any apps or technology services that you recommend for brokers that are trying to stay on track? Whether it’s real estate related specifically, or just habit? Are you using anything? I have a few that I use that I can talk about in a moment, but curious to see what you’re using tech wise?

Ryan D’Aprile 31:03
Yeah, so we’re using something that I built out. And what I did is, we looked at a lot of other things that are out there. And there’s a lot out there. I mean, let’s talk about top producer, a lot of agents use t shirts, right? What I found is a lot of these things have too many bells and whistles, right? Or distractions. And so what we do, and so I guess I’m not gonna be able to answer your question, I think DJ would have handed off to you to, to give out some apps, and I’m not adding value there, I apologize. But what I have done is I mean, anybody can do this, you just have to write down your visual flow of the process and what you have to do, and eliminate as many distractions as you possibly can. And remember, marketing is incredibly important. But it is not, it shouldn’t be overwhelming. And it shouldn’t be taking up a majority of your month. I mean, should we not even take up a majority of date should be able to be accomplished in a one to two hour three hour time period. It’s all about relationship building. So I don’t have apps that are out there. But I mean, everybody ever, there’s so many things that are out there, but just focus on what’s important. And it’s how many times have you touched this person in your network? Right, like literally reached out and engage them? And what apps do you use?

D.J. Paris 32:15
Well, I again, and I’m not a producing broker. So I’m just I’m going to talk just broadly about habit building and habit forming. So there’s, there’s two things I recommend, although there’s a million other options, and certainly this isn’t necessarily the best option, but it’s worked well for me. So if you’re looking for just a to do list manager, the best one I have found is to do just, it’s free to try it. And then I think it’s like 50 bucks a year, it’s really inexpensive. But if you’re looking, so I use it for daily habits, so I have a certain number of habits that I’m trying to cultivate. They could be just a check my finances once a day, it could be reached out to five of our brokers to let them know, we appreciate that they’re hanging their license with us and that we’re thinking about them. That all sorts of you know, for me, my whole life is just small daily habits. I don’t look for the big wins, I don’t know that there are a lot of big wins, but there’s a lot of small wins. And so for me, it’s did I make my bed today, things like that, right? So anything that’s going to help me feel better and more productive. But I I’m a scatterbrain I’m a creative person, I deal very poorly with organization and also prioritization. So that leads me to my so Anyway, check out I think that’s safe for that’s it, what’s it called to do list so to do ISD,

Ryan D’Aprile 33:26
I think that’s a great point, I think all of us are scatterbrains, because we have so much going on, whether you’re creative or not, there’s just too much going on, I had to relate to habits, because that’s all this is. And that’s a lot of what this app that we use is based sure, but I lost 20 pounds 20 to 25 pounds, about five years ago, and I’ve been able to keep it off and the app that I use was called lose it. Yeah, and it’s a simple tracking app of the calories on my intake. And but what it did is it forced me to do an activity of tracking the calories, right, that became habitual for me. Now I have my days off for all I can literally eat a pizza by myself, and you know, and do all these things that but typically on a you know, five to six times a week, five or six days a week, I’m aware of the chloric intake, and at least a little bit of where it is and and so you know, I am an avid coffee drinker. You know, I used to be with cream, a little sweetener, now it’s black, right? But it’s because that app, lose it to your point when and creating different habits. And you know, I haven’t used that app now in four years or five years. But I tell anybody if this is something that you’re looking to do, go to that app, because it teaches you how to track which any good real estate software should be tracking your activities, which then are going to highlight the importance of what you’re doing. Yeah, that’s

D.J. Paris 34:47
awesome. I probably for a lot of our listeners who are into productivity, self improvement, they’ve at some point they’ve come across David Allen’s getting things done if you haven’t you Google it, there’s a whole Almost cult like status around how impressive and workable it is, and what getting things done is, is really a blueprint for how to organize your life and how to organize your day and prioritize. However, if you’ve gone through those in even just read the book, it’s incredibly complicated and daunting, and a tremendous amount of work. So I’ve always struggled over the years as somebody who naturally struggles organization, is how do I actually create a workable system that’s simple and effective. And I found and I’m gonna give a plug to this because it was the best $99 I ever spent. Whereas a guy named Thiago forte in any way you the name of his program, you can just Google it’s called Getting things done like a boss. And he essentially says, okay, here are the actual principles of what you need to do every single day to prioritize your day, and move through it. And then here’s how to check things off and organize it, and how to organize data and all of that, and it’s all video system. And it helped me so much in just creating a framework because I left my own devices, I wake up, I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing today. But now I have some something to actually prioritize and schedule so that that’s just been helpful for me. Obviously, there’s lots of other systems.

Ryan D’Aprile 36:07
But teaching circling back also to your second, or your first question, how we open this up is like, how long does somebody have to wait? Right? What’s the time, right? And there’s a key word in there. It’s called Wait, you know, and yes, it’s a part of the recipe, and you can’t escape it. So just don’t self destruct. And self destructing is where it’s not working. I’m going to try something else. Look, this is how you do it. I’ve been doing it for 16 years, I’ve done this with 400 people, some of the top selling real estate agents in the Chicagoland area, who weren’t even licensed four years ago, had followed the system to a tee and I’m talking about individuals signed 10 1215. One is targeted at $35 million. This is not a team, an individual agent wasn’t licensed in 2014. But these people had to wait, we all have to wait. And what happens is we’re so ambitious, and we’re so quote unquote, driven, and I’m different, I demand more out of myself. That’s what people that’s fine. I understand and you’re going to get the results. It just depends. Are you going to crucify yourself along the way and everybody else around you? Or are you going to allow the weights and the germination process to do what it has to do? You can’t you don’t, I mean, I think Starbucks was started in 1978, or something like that, ask anybody wants to and they’ll say 9090, or something, because that’s when it started become mainstream, you start seeing it everywhere. And then he bought the company sold his copier business and bought Starbucks, I think in 1978, or 1980, or something, it’s like successes and overnight, we overestimate what we can achieve in a year. And we underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. And another thing that I have written up on boards, and I tell people is a year from now, you may wish you started today, right? A year from now, you may wish you started today, because you got to start somewhere. And you have to allow the germination process, which is essentially a time that you’re building trust with these individuals to happen. That’s why I had a job for 18 months, you know, I worked and I got I was getting my MBA, and I had a new daughter who’s 15 years old, it’s probably gonna be coming here pretty soon. But um, because she went out to breakfast with the girls this morning. But that’s those are the things that we’re asking about is like, there are, you know, and also to all the real estate agent list agents listening to this, there’s another ingredient, and it’s called you. So like I tell all our agents, we’re going to be there, we’re going to show up, we’re going to help you, we’re going to do the marketing for you. But there’s things that only you can do for yourself. And it takes you that’s the biggest thing that’s our biggest struggle is ourself. And it’s a big responsibility to say that you are responsible for your own destiny. However, it’s also the keys to freedom, because I can have a boss, that’s a total jerk, I’m not gonna be able to change, right boss, what I can do is I can change myself in my activities, and then I will start to get the results that I want.

D.J. Paris 39:16
And, and by the way, we are all not capable of doing everything ourselves. And there are parts of of all of our personalities where we’re like, I am not good at that. And, and when when you can recognize Hey, that’s not my strong suit, you can find a partner and you can find it you can you know, delegate it, you can find you know, now we live in such this this global service economy where you can find people overseas to help you with things for very inexpensive. So if you think well I don’t have enough income to pay for a full time assistant. I understand that there are virtual assistants that will do it for you know a few bucks every time they do a transaction or they help you with whatever you need. It’s there are so many opportunities to that you should feel focus on, you know what, what you’re passionate about what you’re and let’s and don’t fool yourself with trying to be perfect at things that you’re just not good at?

Ryan D’Aprile 40:08
Well, ideally, you know, the brokerage will even provide most of the shorts, like we have assistants, you know, a lot of agents that are companies that will only hire assistants, and that’s fine. But it’s like, well, when you hire assistant, you have to pay them every two weeks, right? But you also have to manage them, you have to interview them, you have to review them, there’s Are you a manager? Are you an entrepreneur, or what are you and so like, at our organization, we created a Assistant Program, where they’re not responsible for hiring and training them or even paying for them or managing them there. They know what they need to do, where they need to add value, and they assist the agent. Same in the marketing, we do a lot of the marketing. So we just say focus on being right, you do what you can do, you have control over. And I’m the perfect example of that. I mean, I have a, you know, I have, you know, a right and a left arm at my company, I have, you know, partners there that run a marketing department or operations department or a kind department, I am clueless on how to do that those kinds of things, what I do is I focus on me, which is I feel adding value to people motivating them coaching them and saying, Look, I was a real estate agent, this is what I did. This is what I did for over a decade, this is how I got to where I am. It’s simple. This is where I shine, I let all the other things I hand off to other people. It’s very important to find what your lane is, and stay in your lane

D.J. Paris 41:21
is and I think that’s a great place to end. I have one final question is, is there a book that you recommend that you’ve that is really I know, there’s a million books you’ve read that have impacted you anything more recent that you’ve stumbled across sets that you want to recommend to the readers?

Ryan D’Aprile 41:37
You know, it’s so it’s interesting, because you could ask me this and you know, in any given hour, my answer is going to be different. Right? You know, and so, I think just because I was just talking about how we self destruct, right, I’m gonna go into more of a mindset type of book, philosophical, kind of allowing the world to fall in the line view. This might be a little deeper people, but I’m a big follower of Deepak Chopra. You ever read anything by Deepak Chopra? Sure. Of course. He’s my guy. And I love it. Man. He wrote a book called Synchro destiny. Have you ever read it?

D.J. Paris 42:12
Yes, I don’t think so. But I know the book,

Ryan D’Aprile 42:15
EJ read it. It’s phenomenal. And I’m having so much fun with my niece, who is away at college. And we talked about, there’s no such thing as coincidences. These are the thoughts that you put out there, you become aware of them. And it’s just signals that these things are coming to you. Same with growing your real estate business or your mortgage lending business, follow these steps and then become aware, then walk away, let it go. You can’t force it, you have to wait. And you could do other things. Go for a walk, do what you need to do. Give your time for your energy to build up and watch the coincidence that start popping around. And all of a sudden you realize everything you need, flows into you. And I have moments to this day, where I am just I am off course. And I’m just my energy is not good. And you could feel it. If I walk in the room. What I’m doing is I’m forcing it. And I’m wanting it sooner. I’m comparing everything else. And so I go back to these books and one of them is Synchro destiny by Deepak Chopra. It’s phenomenal.

D.J. Paris 43:14
Great. Well, I think that’s a great place to pause for this episode. And so everyone who’s listening two quick things that would help us out tremendously. Number one, send us your questions for Ryan, let us know again, Ryan spends almost all of his time focused on coaching his brokers that is incredibly unique. I’m not even sure that there’s anyone else in Chicago that, that that does that. So that’s how useful this these episodes I know they’re useful, because people tell us but Ryan is here to answer your question. So send us those, you can find us on our website, keeping it real pod.com facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod? And or, you know, there’s a million ways to get questions to so please do that. The other thing is we do

Ryan D’Aprile 43:57
want your questions. Yeah. And our next session as well, I want to just tell him what to put out there DJ to hold me accountable. I’m going to focus now on our next session on skill set, yes, listing presentations list price versus sales price, how to articulate your value, as well. So I just want to give the listeners who, who hopefully took away some value today, when we meet up next month. That’s going to be the topic. And then DJ, like you said, the next session after that, we’ll we’ll do a q&a.

D.J. Paris 44:24
So think about what questions you have for Ryan around skill set building. In other words, how to be a better realtor. How do you actually, you know, create more value for your clients to be able to, you know, obviously, service them more effectively. So send us your questions about that. And that’s, in fact, that was one of the questions I had for you that I thought we should hold off on. So this is perfect timing. The other thing that our listeners can do is please tell a friend so there are 40,000 brokers here in Chicago obviously many more nationwide, but if this is valuable to you send it to your other brokers in Europe. First thing that you think could you benefit from hearing someone like Ryan, and all the other wonderful people that are on our show, it really helps us out and keeps us going. And, you know, with zero marketing budget, we now have 1000s of listeners, which is I would, I hoped what happened, and I’m glad it’s providing value, but please pass the word. Other than that, Ryan, thank you for taking time out of your vacation for this. And

Ryan D’Aprile 45:21
yeah, I love it. Don’t worry about I’m gonna accommodate her next.

D.J. Paris 45:25
Great. Well, everyone who’s listening on behalf of Ryan and myself. Thank you. And Ryan, we’ll see you next time. Have a have a great rest of your vacation.

Ryan D’Aprile 45:32
All right, thanks so much. Take care.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Welcome to the February edition of Coaching Moments with
Ryan D’Aprile!

In this episode Ryan spends a full hour on lead generation – the most important component of a broker’s business. Ryan spends time on the difference between lead gen and marketing, and gives the exact strategies his teaches his brokers on how to add more contacts to one’s database and how to stay in touch over time. Also, Ryan reveals that in every broker’s contact list, there are a minimum of 32-64 transactions per year (and how to capture those deals)!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers except I’m going to change that and say it is made by Chicago real estate brokers, but it’s for brokers all over the country. We do have listeners everywhere. So I’m going to teach myself not to say should just for Chicago brokers. Anyway, today is our monthly episode with Ryan Day, April. And this is called coaching moments. And Ryan is with us if you don’t know Ryan, you should, because not only is he the owner and operator and head coach of the April properties, they have 13 offices all throughout Chicago and the suburbs. He has hundreds of Realtors, lots of top 1% producers, and Ryan spends pretty much all of his time coaching and developing the careers of his realtor. So we’re so honored to have him on the show. He’s a legend in the Chicago market. And we’re really honored to have him today. So Ryan, welcome once again.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:10
Thanks, CJ, it’s good to be here. Oh,

D.J. Paris 1:12
let’s plug your let’s plug your company’s website. It’s deep, real deep, real properties.com. That’s it? All right, great. And if you’re a realtor out there and you want to study or interested in maybe joining Ryan’s team, go to do properties.com. And you can contact them and you can find an office near you and and schedule a phone call or consultation. Or if also if you’re a buyer seller or renter investor that’s interested in working with with one of Ryan’s brokers, you can do that there as well. So anyway, I’ll turn it over to Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:43
All right. Thanks, DJ. Well, thanks for having me appreciate I’m really looking forward to our our monthly meetings. And these are coaching moments that we’re doing. So let’s talk about what we want to cover today. And last month, we covered a morning routine, right? So what I’m going to do today is go over what I review with our agents and what we call our coaching one session. And so I have coaching session one at coaching session two and then we have workshops. And in summary what coaching session one is about it’s it’s kind of it’s like the game of real estate and life in general that we’re going to reveal and so workshop is we’re we’re sleeves are rolled up and we’re doing work. This is more instructive. And just showing everybody like let’s relate it to a board game Monopoly it could real estate board game. And so what we’re gonna do is we’re not going to play the game a nap and Napoli today we’re going to talk about it, we’re going to lay out the board or and show you the pieces, right, here’s go and pass, go collect 200. Here’s boardwalk, that’s a good one to own. And here’s JL and we’re gonna talk about all the different products of real estate. And we’re talking about mindset and attitude. We’re gonna talk about systems. And we’re gonna talk about skill set, and how it all comes into play. And basically give somebody like, you know, a 60,000 foot near view of the game of real estate and how to play that. How’s that sound?

D.J. Paris 3:06
Perfect, I love it.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:09
So let’s go over a couple of principles that so many famous authors and, and economists and gurus have told us over and over again, EMF, Michael Gerber’s, book eater, classic, classic, right 80% of small businesses fail within the first five years, and 20% stay open after five years. And I think he goes on to say, of the 20% that stay open, 50% of them should have shut their doors, right, working longer hours making less money than if they actually just had a job with the weekends off. And so the book talks about systems, and we’ll talk about systems. And what we’re going to do though, is we’re going to talk about the two different types of businesses, the ones that thrive and the ones that die or struggle. And the difference between the two of them. What do you think that get what would your guests be? DJ, the difference between those two types of businesses, the ones that thrive, versus the ones that die and fade away?

D.J. Paris 4:09
Well, I would think that the ones that thrive, figure out how to scale so they have systems in place that allow them to grow. As as new business comes in that

Ryan D’Aprile 4:20
scale, and systems systems are important, because then essentially, your company begins to work for you instead of you working for it. Right. Now, I grew up in a small entrepreneurial family and my father was, you know, an entrepreneur and he worked so hard for my mom and my four brothers. But my father always worked for his business, his business never worked for him. And he provided me a great example when I started reading E Myth to think about how important is to create systems and to scale and by the way, my father was one of my idols and most favorite people in the world. So that wasn’t like an underhand sleight against my father. It’s just that, you know, we all have to educate and learn Ernie and in, you know, you learn from people from what they did well, and what they didn’t do well, and my dad having small auto parts stores throughout the Southside Chicago, and how much he worked when it became an adult, and then I became an entrepreneur, I realized how important systems and scalability is. And so, yeah, so systems is is one of them. Another thing is our skill set. Right? You and your team work on skill set training, and a consistent basis, right?

D.J. Paris 5:28
Absolutely. And I’m just going to go back to scalability for just a moment, I just want to make this point, because it comes up in every single interview we do on this podcast, were usually the broker who is now a top 1%, producer and as a big superstar at some point in their career, or even they might be at this currently when we interview them, but they’ve all either are going through it or have been through it to get to a place and it seems to be around the 12 million to $20 million production number, which is a huge number. And where they start to go, Oh, my God, I’m working 120 hours a week, and they have to figure out a different solution. So sometimes it’s by necessity.

Ryan D’Aprile 6:07
It is and then it’s also now this could digress, I won’t go too down this path short, regarding that what you’re talking about, it’s also understanding your why. Right? Willing, and so some people when they come to those forks in the row, some of them go and grow teams, because that’s, you know, what a lot of people do, and that’s what some stop the Analyze, and they start with why first a great book by Simon Sinek. And you have to ask yourself, why are you doing what you’re doing? And a lot of times we forget that. And sometimes we go down these paths of starting these teams where some people make sense, but a lot of people doesn’t make sense. And there’s a point of diminishing returns. And so I could talk forever about that. But yes, you’re right. I mean, they get to a certain point. And then you have to ask yourself, What’s the system? What’s the scalability? What do I want to scale it to? And then where’s my point of diminishing return? Like, where’s my sweet spot? And maybe it’s right there. Or maybe I keep going, I keep going, it depends on who you are. And it’s really important to know who you’re, you know, it’s boring to know yourself, and what you’re setting out to do and understanding that your y will change, you know, from year to year, if not week to week at times, for sure. So yeah, so So skill sets important, right? And has real estate agents or mortgage lenders, or insurance salespeople, or doctors or dentists, or professional athletes, we should be going in and working on our skill set to perfect our craft, right every single day, every single day. And then another thing is internal versus external. And what I mean by internal versus external, is, let’s talk about shifts in market for a quick moment. Okay. Sure. I don’t know what the year was, was before I was in real estate, I think it might have been 1997 1998. We went from we say we that was a real estate agent then. But they went from the books to the MLS service, right, it was a shift in the marketplace because of technology. You know, and then the disruptors came in 2001, and two, and that’s a shift, and then the great recession came. And that’s a shift. And when you look at the companies, and I’m just using the real estate business, for an example, there’s so many other industries that are as examples. But if you look at the companies that didn’t make it, it was really the internal factors that destroy them that the external factors, markets are always going to be shifting. And so when I say internal versus external, I’m talking about your mindset and your attitude, it’s usually the inside that’s going to make you thrive or make you die. So I think of the difference between the two businesses, the ones that thrive, or the majority that don’t make it. And real estate agents are small businesses. So you just have to take that to mean the numbers aren’t going to lie. And everybody who’s listening here, and whether you’re brand new in the business, you’ve been in it for a while, there’s a certain percentage view 20% or less, that are thriving are making it and the difference is is the foundation, what’s at the foundation of everybody’s business. And the three things I think should be at everybody’s Foundation is a their mindset and attitude. Be their systems, and three their skill sets. So that’s the difference between the two and outs. This is different, you know, this is I think, my third podcast with you as dever. Yep. And so I’m right now at a whiteboard, and then pacing up and down. So when I teach, I’m a very visual teacher. So you really can’t see anything I wrote on the board. So I’m getting used to talk in the radio and realizing people can’t see what I’m saying. So I’m going to just try to describe what I’m seeing here. And I have two triangles drawn next to each one upside down and one is right side up. And the one that’s right side up has that foundation of the mindset, this, the systems and the skill sets. And when the markets shift and change. These are the businesses because of the internal factors that they have, that are going to keep them thriving, versus being able to collapse when a simple market shift happens, which isn’t always happen.

D.J. Paris 9:55
So could this be to to illustrate an example so maybe this seer. If, for example, the sales market potentially could be softer right than it was in previous years, we see mortgage applications are down. So you may see, we may see brokers who are wanting to adapt to that shift switching over to do more rentals, for example, would that be an example of an adaptation?

Ryan D’Aprile 10:17
That’s an example or say, when the market shifts and it saw a softens, what you’ll find out is sellers, you know, who wants to sell their home, are going to do a flight to quality. So they’re gonna find agents that have the skill set, the agents that are top of mind which comes to your systems, and the agent, they have really good reputation and done good business for themselves. And that comes to the mindset and the attitude. So when these markets shift economically, when markets go from, from a hot seller’s market, to a normal market, or to a buyers market, whichever one it shifts to, you start to see if flight to quality, especially from a seller’s market,

D.J. Paris 10:56
to a buyers market makes makes perfect sense.

Ryan D’Aprile 10:59
And so we as real estate agents, we have to understand when that flight to quality comes, are we prepared for it? And then we got to look internally, we have to look inside, we got to look in the mirror and say, Am I doing the things that I need to do on a day to day basis, in and out to achieve more? I think to you know, this is something that I think I mentioned our last session, I love podcasts, I love coaching sessions, and I love seminars, and I think agents need to continually go to them, I heard a statistic, that when you go to a seminar, within an hour of leaving, you’ve lost already 50% of the stuff that you’ve heard, right, and within 24 hours, you lost up to 70%. And after a week, you’ve lost up to 90% Of course we have we have so much data going through our minds every single day with work and life and, and everything else that’s going on. So it’s not like you can, you know, go to one coaching session, one podcast or one seminar, and think you have it figured out yet to continually work on your craft and be passionate about what you do. So let’s look at these two businesses. I’m going to talk about the two foundations, and we’re gonna talk about the mindset and attitude for a little bit. Okay, I’m gonna talk about the mindset for about five minutes here. And then I want to jump into the systems if that’s okay with you perfect. So to talk about mindset, and how it relates to the systems, and what we have to do on a daily basis to be successful in real estate, to be successful in any business that you’re in, your primary objective has to be finding a client, would you agree?

D.J. Paris 12:36
Absolutely. 100%.

Ryan D’Aprile 12:38
Okay. And there are there is our craft and what we do on an on a day to day basis, right? Listing the home, marking it properly communicating with the client. And that’s very important, and you have to perfect that. But if you don’t have the client, you’re not going to have the business or the opportunity to perfect that.

D.J. Paris 12:56
Right. That’s, that’s the customer service side of it, which assumes you’ve already had the customer.

Ryan D’Aprile 13:00
It’s exactly right. And it’s a transaction management, which a lot of times comes naturally because we are not the party that sold the home. And I think it’s really important for our listeners to understand their value. And a lot of real estate agents don’t understand the value that they provide. And some think it’s actually access to the MLS or some marketing. And I really feel strongly that the value that we add is emotional intelligence, and not being emotionally attached to the transaction. And if it wasn’t, I don’t think we would be in business,

D.J. Paris 13:37
right? Zillow does a good job of providing all the information. Anyway, what they aren’t providing is, you know, the emotional side of it. You’re

Ryan D’Aprile 13:46
right, the life consulting, giving advice, there’s so much more. So anyways, let’s get back. So So we’ll talk about the mindset now and how it has an effect on our primary focus of finding the clients. So what we say is we say find someone who wants to buy or sell a home. And when I teach this class, I write that on the board. I’ll ask anybody in the audience if they could define lead generation. Are you familiar with the term lead generation? Of course, of course, right? Everybody’s familiar, the term lead generation, I want you to do. Do something for me next week, DJ Sure. When you come across 510 Real estate agents, ask them to define lead generation for you Sure. And we just watch and listen to the responses that you get. And I bet you will probably get 80% of the incorrect definition of it. And their current definition of lead generation is finding someone who wants to buy or sell a home right? And so why I’m talking about that now in the mindset is we have to understand as humans that like 95% of our day is ran on autopilot, right? What do you mean by autopilot? It’s ran by our subconscious mind. And I think you said earliest, when you and I were talking offline, it’s how you drive a car.

D.J. Paris 15:12
That’s the reason we could drive a car is we don’t have to pay attention to all of the subconscious things we’ve just mastered, so that we can pay attention to the road, but also remember to brake and hit the gas and, you know, hit the turn signal, etc.

Ryan D’Aprile 15:26
That’s right. And so when we have moments of consciousness and clarity, which is typically in a coaching or training session, for the moments that you are conscious and clear, we have to define and talk to our subconscious mind, we got to talk to our autopilot, and say, our number one priority has to be finding somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, and understand that we have habits that are going to continually bring us back to our starting point. So when you take when you when you look at yourself, and you look at life, and sometimes life keeps bringing us back to the same place over and over and over again, that’s just our internal GPS or auto system. And it’s our habits that are leading us back to where we need to be. So when we are taking moments to work on our business. And we think about mindset and attitude, we got to say what is the primary thing is actually find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home. And then I have to do 60 minutes to 90 minutes a day of activities that are going to help me find somebody who wants to buy or sell home. If I could do that day in and day out five working days, you’ll be a superstar, you’ll be a superstar. And then what will happen is, after a year, you’ll continually do it, but you won’t even realize what you’re doing. It’s just like you’re driving a car. But you just get that. Oh boy, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book I can’t remember, was it outliers?

D.J. Paris 16:48
Yes, you just get your book your 10,000 hours,

Ryan D’Aprile 16:52
your 10,000 hours. That’s exactly right. So if you can, when you start that me, it’s perfect. It’s the beginning of a new year. If you can’t commit to being conscious, you know, a half hour a day to plan out what you want to do. And be very specific and direct with yourself. That my job is to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, throw away the word lead, generate, right, find someone who wants to buy or sell a home and then focus on those activities. And then you do that day in and day out for five days a week, you’ll be lightyears ahead. So now let’s move off of

D.J. Paris 17:27
well, I want to make one point about lead generation, because I think oftentimes, brokers like you were saying, maybe think about lead generation in in a more myopic sense, or maybe not as full. For example, what I, what I was going to mention was, here’s what I think lead generation is not, I’m going to send out a Facebook post, announcing a new listing right? Now, you may end up getting a new client as a result of that. But it really is sort of accidental, because you’re not necessarily looking for people specifically who need your services, you’re just announcing kind of throwing a wide net out and seeing if any fish land in, and maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but I wouldn’t consider that a lead generation activity, you’re not proactively going out and saying I need to find somebody specifically, who needs my services.

Ryan D’Aprile 18:14
Well, okay, so and that’s, and that’s extra, I’m going to talk more and more about lead generation. Now what I was gonna transition off of is the mindset part and the habitual and the auto body. Okay, I don’t. But you’re exactly right. And what’s as you’re seeing this, I’m writing on the whiteboard right now, because I just can’t help I, you know, I’m used to having a classroom of people. And I asked agents, and they have to understand the difference between these two categories. What is the lead source? And what is marketing? And I’ll hear agents say to me, I don’t do that. And let’s throw in an action. I don’t do postcards, or I don’t do email marketing, or I don’t do what, right, because I haven’t gotten a lead from it. And I asked him, I said, Do you know the difference between the lead source and marketing? So I don’t know if I’ve done this podcast before. But can I Sure. Can they do this? Yes. Second. So let’s go over lead sources. Okay. So lead source is your network? Correct? Right. That’s one lead source. Another lead source is a referral from your network, right? The two different things right. One is your network. One is a stranger that your network referred you to? Sure. Another lead source is a farm, right? A neighborhood that you say market to consistently or an open house and open houses a lead source or your For Sale sign? That’s a lead source, correct? Yep. All about a cancelled listing. Expired listing. Or for sale by owner. That’s a lead source, correct?

D.J. Paris 19:55
Yeah. Those are people that need your service.

Ryan D’Aprile 19:58
Hey, I might got to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home. Yep, here. They live. Yep. Okay. Those are lead sources. Now, let’s talk about marketing. Two different things. Marketing is a tool that you use to communicate with the lead source. So marketing is a postcard. Marketing is email marketing, like an email blast, it’s called spam. Marketing is digital marketing. A lot of people are using stuff like AdWords right now. It’s a great platform to market. And by the way, let’s just let’s, let’s digress. So that platform, and they’re gonna get some good free advertising space here. Ad works will give you three different ways to advertise. Are you familiar with AdWords? Okay, and it’s okay to talk about,

D.J. Paris 20:48
of course, well,

Ryan D’Aprile 20:49
so you have three ways you can market your listing, okay? To an area, you could market yourself to a zip code, or you can market yourself to what they call a sphere of influence, sphere, sphere of influence network met database, it’s like Kasaa. And house, it’s the same same thing, just a different name. Be with me. Okay. So we’ll talk about the lakes are where we find buyers and sellers here. But I point out to everybody, you have to understand, you are gambling, your time and your money, no matter whatever business venture you set out, and you’re gambling, your time and your money. And you have to in marketing, you have to spend money, you have to invest money, but you should know the statistics and the return on investments. And we’re going to get and I’ll tell you right now, if you are looking at AdWords, you hit your sphere of influence. That’s what they call it, your network first before you go to the farm, right. But anyways, let’s come back to the marketing sources. I apologize. So you have postcards, you have email marketing, you have digital, what else? Oh, you have this thing called social media, right? And social media is Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and whatever else might be out there. Correct. Okay, so I hear people say I got the sale, I got this lead. I have this buyer as well. Where did you get him? I got him from Facebook, to know you did it? Most likely, it’s a friend of yours on Facebook, they came from network marketing, you might put a advertisement on Facebook. But then where are you directing? Is it to people who like your page? Or typically your network, right? Or is it a zip code, which is a farm, but you have to understand what the tool is? It’s a marketing tool. So what you do and and again, I wish you had the whiteboard, or you could see it here. But I have my 12345 different marketing tools. And now you get to pick where you want to put them Do you want to put towards your network? You want to aim it towards your farm? Do you want to send it to like purchase web leads or whatnot? Does that make sense? Okay, so let’s transition over to systems right now. We’re gonna talk about systems and how we have to focus on marketing to become essentially the agent that number one agent in your networks mind, right? So. So our primary focus to be successful in this business when repeated again is to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home. So I’m going to draw a triangle again, okay. And I’m going to draw two horizontal lines in the triangle. So that essentially I have three. I got three pools, I have the top of the triangle, the middle of the triangle, and the big base of the triangle with me. Okay, so the top of the triangle now these are now we’re gonna go fishing, okay. And in these three different lakes, that’s what these are. These are three different lakes, buyers and sellers live and it’s our job to find them. So the first lake which is at the top is what we call purchase web leads. What’s a purchase web leads

D.J. Paris 23:54
does it be a Zillow lead Trulia realtor.com, that sort of thing.

Ryan D’Aprile 23:58
Perfect. Exactly. So you could take your time and take your money, you can invest in it, you could put your picture up your your, your picture is gonna be next to other real estate agents, listings. It’s gonna look like your listing and Zillow selling you it so you can pick up the lead, in short, right? So that’s one place that we can go and fish for a buyer or seller. Another part, the next lake down is called Lake prospecting. It’s a little bit of a bigger lake. So it’s going to have different channels in it. Okay, so I’ll name some channels of prospecting. One is open houses, right? Who goes open houses, buyers? wires, right and who else goes open houses, sellers, and also people you can meet in your network. Now I don’t have the time and I don’t want to just eat into all our time here. But I this is for anybody who’s going to come to my coaching your regular insight lateral get set up with this question, okay? Because I see who comes to who comes to open houses. I’m going to ask it to you again. I’m gonna set you up with that Okay, DJ who comes open house buyers? All right, who else comes

D.J. Paris 25:05
neighbors? Sellers? Gosh, other realtors? Maybe?

Ryan D’Aprile 25:13
Yeah. See you past a lot of dead. You did a good job. I tell you what to do, but a lot people use the word nosy nature. Or they use looky loos I want.

D.J. Paris 25:25
looky looky and that’s great.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:29
I know, what can you use? If you had a gas? There’s 10 Real estate agents in front of us how many say they can’t stand the looky loos and the newspapers, right. And this is the internal thing that will kill your business. It’s your mindset. You know, I tell my children, you know, watch your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, right, your words become your destiny. And when you hear yourself speak, and if they come across negative, that’s how you’re thinking, and it’s gonna bring you right back to where you don’t want to be. And so there’s this matrix that I draw, right, that I’ve seen before. And we talk about your, your BS, you know, Bs stands for systems, right? Your belief system, right? A lot of people when I ask them what BS stands for, they say that oh, shit, of course. Right? And I see, well, you know, a lot of people’s belief systems aren’t bullshit. So you’re kind of right. Because your belief system leads over to white, or your actions. Man, you know what I’m talking about here? Right? Right. So I have the actions will then give my results, which will go down or reinforce my belief system or my bullshit. So you draw the red, right? You draw the green plus, or the red negative next to be right. And nosy neighbor or looky loo, does that get a negative?

D.J. Paris 26:44
Or does it get a pot, a lot of people gets a negative,

Ryan D’Aprile 26:47
negative, which then takes negative action with negative results. And then next day, you’re out. So sorry about that. But I always tend to digress back to the mindset. Because 80 percentage success, there’s no way of escaping it is going to be on your attitude and your mindset. Because if you don’t have the right attitude, and mindset, you’re not gonna do

D.J. Paris 27:06
and also, it’s the one thing you have control over, it’s about the only thing you have control over is actually your response to things, not the thing itself. Like, you don’t have control who walks in the door and an open house, but you do have control about how you perceive them and how you act towards.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:24
Right, and the beauty. I think the beautiful thing about our business is it’s just life in general meeting people. I mean, the most purposeful fulfilling part of our business, I feel is the clients that become my friends, and the relationship. Money is just a byproduct of this stuff. I’ll have another coaching session where we talk about starting with why and why we do what we need to do. But there’s a great exercise and as individuals, why are you in the real estate business? And some say for freedom, some say for money, and so on and so forth. And then I go to them, and I say, Well, I’m in it, because I have three daughters, and I would like to pay for the wedding day. And I’d like to be paid for them to go to college. And you know what, I love to travel with them. And we go to you know, we’re going to go to Vancouver ski as a family spring break. We just came back from Punta Cana and we’re, you were so lucky that we have a summer home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and that’s why I work but it’s for the experience life experience. It’s not for the money, but they take butter. I really want to focus when I’m in this business. My first and for my first focus is people it and who do I meet? Because it’s, it’s not what you know, DJ, it’s Yeah, too. You know, it’s who you know, and it’s a cliche for a reason. And if you could come into this game, playing this game with the right mindset, and understanding, I’m just looking for adventure through people and meeting people, this business becomes easier and easier, and money just tend to follow. Okay, so let me come back to my triangle. Okay, we’re going back. We’re fishing again. Okay, we’re, we’re Huck Finn, we got the fishing poles out and we’re looking for buyers and sellers. We’re in Lake prospecting right now. And one channel is that open house channel, the other channel is a farm. Now what’s a farm? Most people know what it is, but it’s a neighborhood you live in, and you’re gonna send a postcard every month you’re gonna farm the community, maybe you’ll do an eight by eight strategy, and everything else that’s out there to farm. Another prospect. Technique is, you know, marketing to cancel and expireds and for sale by owners correct. But what’s a cancelled listing? Well, it’s somebody who’s no longer on the MLS. Describe that seller for me and I point right to the definition of regeneration. Someone who wants to sell their home for Yeah,

D.J. Paris 29:41
which is which is different from how most people would describe a canceled would be an angry, upset person who had a bad experience with a realtor which may or may not be true, but it is it is the automatic almost everybody in America automatic assumption we make.

Ryan D’Aprile 29:58
That’s exactly how we’re ready springs and they definitely that’s their emotion. But their desire is the home. Your job is to find them. So that’s another channel. Okay? And there’s there’s many channels in this this bigger Lake Lake prospecting. Now let’s come down to the base. Okay? This really big lake. It’s like the size of Lake Michigan. It’s called your network. You could call it your sphere of influence. You caught your met database, like I said, house in casa, right? Different name, anything your network. So these are the three places that we can find people who want to buy or sell a home. Now, do you see the triangle and you see the three different lakes TJ Can you see that? Now they’re no longer lakes. Okay. They’re now blackjack tables. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so now we’re gonna go gambling. And we’re gonna gamble two things, we’re gonna gamble our time and we’re gonna gamble. Our money. Is your money valuable yet?

D.J. Paris 30:54
For me? It I think it is.

Ryan D’Aprile 30:56
Right is your time? Absolutely. And our clients have more time than money. In fact, there isn’t anybody that I know that has more or should be more money than time I said it backwards, they have more money right than time. Time is more valuable than money. You can’t get time back. And our clients hire us no matter how many disruptors come in, because we fill a need. And one of these is we offset we give them time back in addition, emotional intelligence and whatnot. Now we got to look at it for ourselves. And we’re going to look at these three different lakes that were fishing in. And we’re gonna convert them now to blackjack table. Okay, and we’re gonna gamble we ever blackjack tips, or blackjack chips are our time and our money. And we’re gonna look at the first blackjack table, which is called purchase web leads. And your conversion rate, your chances of winning on this blackjack table is about a one to 5%

D.J. Paris 31:54
and five for you. It might even be a little high. But that’s yes. If you’re a absolute wizard, those leads 5%.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:02
Totally is I’m actually giving them the benefit of the doubt right? Here. Let’s go. Let’s take out the 5% one to 5% chance of converting. Okay. Now our next our next blackjack table, open houses and farming and calling cancels and expires about a five to 15% chances of winning a

D.J. Paris 32:21
few great sounds about right. Yep.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:24
These are pretty big, you know, Delta isn’t my percentages. But again, I’m just trying to make a point to the listener here. Then your network, your networks about a 75% chance of winning or more. Would you agree with that? Okay, cool. So you and I were at a casino together, and we have our chips, we have our chips of money and we have chips or time, where are you going to put your chips network. That’s where I’m gonna put my money. And so many agents in this business put their chips on the one to three 5% and to five to 15%. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t agents that can have success in doing that. Because I’m not sitting here right now saying, this is the only thing you should be doing. I have a cancelled expired strategy. I have a farm and Open House strategy, I have a purchase web lead strategy, I have a strategy for each of them. I might personally not execute on every one of them. Because there’s a point of diminishing return. But I do have a strategy built out for each one of these. But I’m going to start first with the one has highest rate of return, which is our network. And it sounds like you agree with that. Alright, so then let’s talk about that. Okay. So there says we’re still on the system’s here, okay, we’re not going to talk about skill set in this coaching session. Okay, skill set is buyer presentations, competitive pricing strategies, you know, your average days on market, your average list, price of sales price, the cost of carrying a home all those really important things that go on to, you know, growing your business. We only have like a one hour segment here. Right. So I’m just talking about the middle pillar, I talked a little bit about mindset, but I’m just talking about the systems today. And the sources of where we find people that want to buy or sell a home is that okay? So we are going to talk about our network. And we are going to look at the average person. And we’re going to pick a random number, which I don’t think is the number that’s on the line, or it’s too hard to achieve. So and I encourage anybody who’s listening to this, that is local, or shoot me an email or whatever, if you have any questions about what I’m about to say here, but I think on average, the average person knows 200 people in their community basically in there in Chicagoland they know, they could find at least 200 people you could find 500 friends on Facebook, that doesn’t count. But what we have to do is we got to start with a system. We call it our dashboard. Word, people have CRMs they have databases, but you have to lay out a plan. And you have to label out and you have to list out 200 people that you know, and you might not be best friends with these people. But over the course of two years and beyond, we’re going to take action to become closer to them. Does that make sense, CJ. And the what we’re trying to achieve is market share. And when I say market share, I don’t mean market sharing a community as a real estate agent. I don’t mean well, I’m a real estate agent, I got 10% of the market. That’s not the market share I’m talking about. I’m talking the market share of that, those 200 people or more that you have the market share of their brain. And so I think I did this last time DJ, and I apologize if I’m repetitive, but I don’t think it’s too bad to be repetition is a mother. Right? Okay, great. So let’s do this. Name of fast food, hamburger restaurant domain. Name a soft drink. Name and just to name a real estate agent, right. So you have to do that exercise now. Now, every listener here, just do that thing, you guys. So hamburger place McDonald’s, soda pop Coca Cola, gym, shoe, Nike. Now,

I want you to in your mind, ask your group of 200 people, your network, name a real estate agent? And are they naming your name. And so many real estate is when agents come and join our company, we have beautiful brand, we have beautiful product, but I’m going to empower you and coach and train you. There’s so many people are saying it’s the company brand that is so important. No, it’s you. It’s your first and last name. And it is the market share that you have amongst your network. Because consumers don’t hire real estate companies. I mean, they do technically, according to the law, but they hire a person, they hire a real estate agent. And if you are going to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, if you’re going to capture that percentage of business that’s coming out of your network, every single year, which I’m gonna tell you what that is in a minute here. You have to be the McDonald’s, Coke or Nike in those 200 people’s mind. And I’m telling you, that is not hard or expensive to achieve. Now, if I want to become McDonald’s or Nike, across the country, I’m in trouble. I don’t have a multi million dollar budget. Right. But for 200 people using marketing tools that I know are not lead sources, a lead sources and network lead sources, a farmer lead sources open house, I’m going to use the marketing tools, I’m going to use these marketing tools, I’m going to make them very concentrated, I’m going to hit that network properly. All right, you bet your ass after two years, those 200 people are gonna say, right. And the statistics are this 16% of your network transact every year. And a lot of them transact twice. Because if you sell a home, let’s say you buy a home. So if you have those 200 people 16% of 116 16% of 232. So if you have 200 people, and you have a complete database, and what I mean by a complete database, their their name, primary contact, secondary contact, and secondary contact is their, their, their spouse, or their partner or whatnot, right? Their home address, and their email address. And why we want these things is because we need a way to deliver our marketing tools to them, so that we become top of mind. Okay. So if you do this properly for two years in a row, on the second year, alright, the second 12 months, you stand in front of 32 buyers and sellers every year, and they transact twice. That’s a potential 64 leads, and what’s a lead somebody who wants to buy or sell a home? And who are these people from a network. They’re the people that know like, and trust me, and 85% of sellers call one real estate agent as coordinator of realtors. I just want to be that one, right. And then in future coaching sessions, we’ll work on skill set, so that when I am in competition, I’m going to blow the person away, because most people aren’t going to take time to work on their craft. But if you get in front of me, I’m going to have everything in line date, show you and articulate to you my value. Does that make sense? Now here’s another cool thing. So 16% of your network transacts every year so I’m going twice. But everybody in your network on average knows for people

D.J. Paris 39:52
who want to let me pause for just one second I want to make I want to make sure we really hammer this point. What Ryan just basically said is Do you know 200 people, we know that everybody knows approximately 200 people every year 16% or 32, or 64 transactions, because some of them will transact twice. That is how many transactions are in the people that know you the best, and who are obviously most likely to use you. They are also likely to forget that you’re a real estate agent. If you are not staying in constant communication. We’re talking about developing a strategy to stay keep, you know, front of mind. So you become their Nike or their McDonald’s. But that is how many transactions are have. I mean, I would think most people listening if they could do 32 to 64 transactions from their existing network a year would be very, very happy. So I just want to make that point. That is a huge, huge thing Ryan just said,

Ryan D’Aprile 40:46
You are sitting on a goldmine. Most people are not mining or gold mined, and they’re going after other people’s gold. Nice, and it doesn’t make sense. And that’s the thing that I love about this business, too. Is there’s more than enough for everybody. There really is. I mean, how many people at cash? I really don’t really answer this DJ. But how many people live in the United States? Is that 303 50

D.J. Paris 41:06
Millions living?

Ryan D’Aprile 41:10
Okay, 350 million people. Okay, fine. Do you know how many Realtors there are in the national?

D.J. Paris 41:14
Many there are in Chicago and the suburbs? Because just a few hours ago, I did a huge dump. Of all of the realtors there are just under 40,000 In Chicago, including the suburbs alone. So 40,000 just here locally.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:30
All right, yeah. But your calculator out by chance. Cool. All right. So there’s 1.5 million real estate agents. In North America. There’s 350 million people. Now, can you do the math divide? 1.5 million divided by 350 million?

D.J. Paris 41:50
See? 233.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:56
So yeah, one and a half million divided by 300? million.

D.J. Paris 42:04
Let’s see. That is point 004.

Ryan D’Aprile 42:09
Yeah, percent. I hear so many real estate agency to me, there’s so many agents and less than

D.J. Paris 42:16
less than half of 1%.

Ryan D’Aprile 42:20
There is so much for everybody. But the thing is, when I hear people I saved myself, oh. And I said, I’ll say this, I think it, you poor thing. You got a negative mindset. Because I look at you and you’re incredibly powerful. You just don’t see it. Yeah, I think that’s my job in bringing that out of real estate agents, but you understand how powerful you are, you have got a wonderful personality, whether you realize it or not, there are people that like you, it’s called your network, you just got to be in front of them and create relationships with them, you got to go into this business, understand that your passion is about meeting people and learning and helping people, everything else will fall into place. If you do those things, there’s four tenths of 1% of the population.

D.J. Paris 43:04
And what’s funny is I did the calculation backwards. But it actually illustrated an interesting point. Because what it’s saying is, for every 233 people out there, there’s one real estate agent, which by the way, corresponds to Ryan’s, you know, 200 people. So really, there is so much business to go around, because there’s only one realtor for every 233 people.

Ryan D’Aprile 43:25
Regardless of the market, you’re talking to person, right, and I’m just I guess I’m talking myself in the third person here. But this is weird. But you, you know, I grew my business, I was a real estate agent in the Great Recession. 2008 910. Those are great years. For me, it was terrible to see what people went through. So don’t get me wrong. But as a real estate agent, I was crushing it. But I did do something in 2007, by the way in summer, 2007 and 2008. And what I did is I stopped watching the news. Now the problem with that is I’m probably the most ignorant guy you’ll ever meet. I’m not into politics anymore. I’m not very familiar what’s going on. And I’m not telling the listeners, you have to do what I’m doing. I’m a little bit of an extreme. But I’m a very sensitive person. And I understand my subconscious mind has an effect in my life. I’m living the life of my dreams. Not everything’s perfect, but I’m having a blast, okay. But I can get very depressed. If I hear about a drive by shooting, I have wobble, I can’t take it. And if I become numb, it doesn’t mean it’s not having an effect on me. It’s affecting my subconscious mind. But let me get off that I’m a freak about mindset. So let me get off that for a second. Let’s come back. Let’s come back to the 1.5 million real estate agents North America out of 350 people that live in North America. And the people that say well, you know, there’s so many real estate agents there’s not. And on top of that, of the 1.5 million real estate agents in North America, half 50% Don’t sell I mean,

D.J. Paris 44:51
it’s probably even bigger than that are part time like you were saying, you know whether they’re part time or full time so maybe even maybe half of those are even full time agents. Maybe

Ryan D’Aprile 45:02
Don’t sell a home, right and transact. Now you’re at 750,000 agents that are actually in it to win it. So there isn’t any competition except for yourself. There really isn’t. And there’s more than enough to go out. But what you have to do is you got to control the controllables. And that’s yourself. And that is your campaign. And that’s your marketing campaign, to these individuals. So that when you say Naima, hammer, drank and say McDonald’s and throw Pepsi, coke, name a gym shoe, they say Nike name, a realtor, they say, DJ, that’s your job. And once we perfect that, and we got that down, then let’s start looking at the other strategies, which we’ll talk about in later sessions. They’re phenomenal, right, and they complement your business. But let’s build on a foundation first. And the foundation is your network. Because your network is your what TJ

D.J. Paris 45:53
is your, that’s your

Ryan D’Aprile 45:57
I never said this to you before your network is your net worth. And that’s what I want to teach my three daughters, and anybody who comes in front of me when I’m going to work with them on real estate, your network is your net worth. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and these are all cliches for a reason, because they’re true. So let’s build a business off of those fundamentals. And let’s focus on our day to day activities, the rest will fall into place. So let’s get into the marketing campaign. Okay, and these are, we’re going about 45 minutes here, and I want to be conscious of your time, so you just don’t want to stop. Okay, so we’re gonna look at, we’re gonna look at two methods that we have to perform to become that number one real estate agent, in our networks, mine, the one is auto marketing. Okay. And honestly, this should be the easiest at our company, we do this for our agents, we did it in the beginning. And then we came to the realization, we actually are going to let our agents do the second part that I’m going to tell you about, and focus on that will handle their campaign. And the campaign is the campaign to their network, and its auto marketing. So for example, I’m going to draw two stick figures on this wall. Okay, one’s a real big stick figure with a big bubble ahead, right. And that’s your network that’s representing 200 people, or more. And then all the way to the left, want to draw a little stick figure, and that’s me, okay. And then I’m going to draw a wall, like a lunch right down the middle separating me in my network. And that line is a wall between myself and those 200 people. Do you know what that wall is called? DJ? Yes, life. Everybody has life happening to them? Right? Everybody’s dealing with something dramatic, tragic, exciting. And we are the center of our own worlds. But we’re not the center of their worlds. And we never will be we never should be. And so that wall between you and your network of life, we have to figure out how can we automatically penetrate it. While we can do things that as a real estate agent that we do, that will build trust, because people hire people that they know, like, and trust. So that is like, so remember, I got these two stick figures, right. So now I’m gonna start throwing arrows. It’s kind of a silly drawing that I’ve came up with in my coaching, but I’m throwing arrows at this wall to break through. Okay, and come number one, and my big stick figure, I draw like a little brain at top of that other person’s head, I want to become number one, in their mind share. So I’m gonna throw arrows, what’s an arrow that I’m going to throw at them? It’s a postcard. It’s every other month. Ideally, it’s

D.J. Paris 48:48
just possibly talking about postcards, because it’s so interesting, because there’s so many ways to do them. And I will tell you, I live in a condo building in River North and a building that I would think would I would be getting postcards daily with 40,000 realtors in Chicago, you would think that I would be getting constant communication, I get maybe one postcard a month from one realtor, and then I never get another postcard from them again. I certainly don’t get anything weekly or monthly from even the same person. Nobody does this and everybody should consider doing it. So I just wanted to make that point.

Ryan D’Aprile 49:24
Well, it’s called a campaign. You know, and you have to have a campaign, because none of them are foolproof. And I’m going to give you a choice. Okay, we’re you and I, you know, we’re trying to break down a wall together, okay. And we’re throwing arrows at it. You gotta throw one arrow you got postcards, one of the arrow is one arrow in your quiver. We got others we need to head. Now there’s people that say I’m going to do social media and it’s all I’m going to do you know, it’s not 2018 Ryan, you’re a dinosaur. I’m like, Well, the problem was social media. It’s great. It’s a wonderful tool, okay, and it’s free. But algorithms that are built. And there’s people that just are not on it, I mean, everybody’s on it, but they’re not on it every single day, they’re not.

D.J. Paris 50:11
Also on pages, if you have your own page, you the people who like your page, only on average will see somewhere between 20 to 40% of your posts, it averages about 30% on the current algorithm, so even people that have signed up to get your, your notices on Facebook, are only seeing about 30% of those.

Ryan D’Aprile 50:32
And that’s the biggest thing. And that’s what people have to understand. It’s like signing up is key DJ, see, let me meet me. When people decide to follow you on Instagram or Facebook, they’re deciding to follow you. So though it might be free, but to provide content. Now, I’m not telling you, you guys spend all your time worrying about the content. But I’m giving you a description of the difference of marketing tools. And what the these people are deciding to follow you only 30% of them are going to see it. But you know what? I don’t think you’ve decided to follow Coca Cola, did you? But you know what, you see them at a time. And you don’t even realize it. They McDonald’s the same with Nike. And their objective is to be number one in market share. And by the way they are. So all we’re doing is learning from the past. Okay, and taking their business practices and putting them into practice for us with our network. So a postcard is one and you have to do it.

D.J. Paris 51:26
Absolutely. You just

Ryan D’Aprile 51:28
do it. And you know, you could do it 12 times a year I think your best if you’re doing anywhere from 17.

D.J. Paris 51:33
I was real quickly I did an interview with a gentleman. I’m gonna redo it because I accidentally deleted it before it went live and he wanted to kill me. He’s a nicest guy. He works for Keller Williams in Lakeview. His name is Steven Hannah. He told me what his first year this is the best story ever. He said that he provided two assumptions. When I first started number one that my the two and he had 100 people in his database. That’s all he had. He said I assumed those 100 people were the most likely to use me as a realtor. And my second assumption is they are going to forget that I am a realtor. So because those are my two assumptions, so I had to figure out how do I not let them forget the Coca Cola example. Even though I didn’t sign up to follow Coca Cola, his tweets, how is it that I thought Coca Cola right away when Ryan asked me because of course I see them constantly at eight times a week, right? So he’s he would he did, he sent out a postcard every single week, every Friday for 52 weeks. And he said it was it was almost insane. He goes but it was so silly. He said you couldn’t forget that I was the realtor. And he said he made them funny, random, cute and everything. But he said that was he was the smartest thing you ever do. After two years. He said 60 of those 100 People use

Ryan D’Aprile 52:45
it by the way, I’ve never met him. But I’ve heard his name. And I know.

D.J. Paris 52:49
One of the top top people Absolutely.

Ryan D’Aprile 52:52
Right. So everybody, we’re here to help you. And you said, Steve right now, Right? Steve a hat now myself, we’re here to help you. And by the way, I can’t speak for Steven. But I’m not a rocket scientist. This is nothing that is like we’re not splitting the atom here. Very simple, most complicated thing is the attitude, the mindset to get over to execute these things. So the arrows, we got the postcards, we have email marketing, we have a digital campaign. And then we have a social media campaign. Like I said, we do that for our agents so they could focus on really the most important part. Okay, so we just took some time and we talked about marketing, auto marketing consistently every single month your network to capture those leads, but there’s something else you have to do. And this is the work. This is the agents business and what they have to do five days a week. And what you have to do is you have to create four quality touches, I’m talking about you reaching out and saying hello, how are you? once a quarter, four times a year, you need to send four items of value, and an annual real estate report every year to all 200 individuals. You’re talking about maybe an hours a day. If that’s it, you’re talking maybe an hour’s work a day. And if you get into it and you realize all you’re doing is making friends, like again, I’m gonna call you like DJ What’s going on man? I heard this new restaurants in River North. I know you live at such and such place. Have you been there? In our I’ve seen that haven’t been there. Alright, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll let you know what it is. But hope all’s well man. And by the way, I haven’t seen you in three years, but I just communicated with you. And I did it via text or did it via instant message you know on Instagram or Facebook message, or maybe I called you. But check, check. Right, you’re done this first quarter. I’ll see you next quarter. Because people hire people they know like and trust. My auto marketing is done set it and forget it. Now there are people that really want to dissect their marketing and really focus on the message. That’s fine. If you have the time, I never have had the time I have my company just do it for me. And I forget about it, and it works. And where I put my time is building the relationships or

D.J. Paris 55:13
relationships. Absolutely.

Ryan D’Aprile 55:16
Yes, that’s exactly. And so, you know, the quarterly items of value are very simple. You know, they could be, you know, a beers magnet. I know, it sounds silly, and someone can be cringing out there. But it works. It’s an item of value. It could be calendar events, I’m not talking about email, I’m talking by the way, this is a physical thing. Or

D.J. Paris 55:37
it could be the fina always uses the example of the ketchup, relish and mustard, the I forget the puns you use, you guys can Google it. But but you know, it costs like $4 for all three of those, and you drop it off. And there’s a cute little pun that goes along with saying I relish your referrals. And from a broker that cuts the mustard and let’s catch up or something like that. Yeah.

Ryan D’Aprile 55:57
Right, right. So just something like that. Again, those are like, look, I will never tell you to call your clients for referral. There are those out there that completely I will say call them out. But in your direct mail, in your items of value, the dollar sneeze, it’s fine. That’s doing the sales for you. You know what I mean, you don’t have to be an acronym. It just gets it. They know what it is the respect that they grab it, and they throw it on their refrigerator, throw it in their garbage, it’s at your top of mind. The annual the annual item of value is an annual Real Estate Report. And it’s a tool that you can use, you could use RPR resources, you could use a CMA, I’m not going to get into the details of it. We can maybe in a later session, but is a beautifully bound Real Estate Report that you send to all 200 people in your network once a year, I always tell my agents the magic really happens. The second and third year they received it in a row. Because what happens is, you’re taking yourself serious, and you’re treating your business seriously. So all of a sudden, they take you serious, and you know you are we are judged all the time. And if you’re inconsistent in your marketing, and you’re inconsistent, your follow through, you’re gonna be judged. And if you’re consistent, you might be worried they’re gonna throw it away. But remember that game of life, everybody’s dealing with life, you’re not the center of the world, they’re going to see it, they’re going to throw it away, don’t worry about it, it works. It’s that it’s magic. And they’re not going to sit around and ridicule you all day long. Because so many people are afraid about selling out marketing Stop, stop thinking about it. It’s a narrow second front of these people’s eyes. But it will consistently for two years in a row and you don’t skip a beat, you have laid a foundation, and you’ve sold your network, I take myself serious, I take my business serious. So when you’re ready to sell or buy a home, take me serious and they will and they’ll reach out to you. So it’s a process, right? All this is a process. It’s something that you have to work at day to day on the majority of your time, and not the majority, excuse me, but about an hour a day, you got to focus on those relationship touches, you should have some type of system, a dashboard, or CRM that tracks it, because tracking is just as important as doing it. And geez, I think that’s it for today.

D.J. Paris 58:24
So many good takeaways. I would say, you know, if you’re listening, and you’re a realtor, if you don’t have a strategy around what we talked about a lot of different areas, whether it’s whether it’s adding to your database, or deepening the relationships of your existing database, or just marketing to your existing database, this is the time you know, it’s the beginning of the year, you can now do that you can now say I’m not going to send out one postcard this year, I’m going to send out 12, or I’m going to send out an annual, you know a housing report. And I’m going to call at four times a year and make sure that my my database knows I care about them. And I’m going to look on Facebook to see what’s going on in their lives have something to talk about, and all of that. So it’s all amazing.

Ryan D’Aprile 59:10
And if you don’t think in your neighborhood, in your network, your friends that are financial planners, your friends that are accountants, your friends that are doctors, they’re not doing this. Right, you have to do it. Your customer, your client, because of the profession you chose is your network. So let’s mark it to them.

D.J. Paris 59:29
Awesome. I love it. Well, I think that is a perfect place to pause. As as always if you’re listening and you say boy, I want to you know work at a firm like Ryan’s do pro properties.com You can learn all more about what they offer brokers also if you might be a buyer or seller, renter yourself and you might be interested in working with one of Ryan’s team. These are the kinds of trainings that his team goes through. And obviously he has a lot of great success with his with his brokers to back it up so you can reach out to him directly as well. Just visit deepl properties.com You can find them on social media, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Anything else? Right?

Ryan D’Aprile 1:00:07
No, that’s it, DJ, thanks for having me, man, I really enjoy these. Well, I

D.J. Paris 1:00:10
know the audience shifts as well. And one last point, if you are listening and you say, Oh, I wish Ryan would have gone into more detail on x, y, or z or I wish, I have a question for him, I want him to go over this in the future. Send us your comments and questions. We always love the compliments, but we love questions even more. So send those to us. You can can find us at keeping it real pod.com We have a contact form there on Facebook keeping it real pod, you can send us a message there too. And let Ryan let us know what you’d like Ryan to talk about or go over and we will answer your questions in future episodes. So on behalf of Ryan and myself, I thank you for listening, please, as Ryan would probably suggest to everyone listening, tell a friend if you have other realtors that are in your office. We do this Ryan does this I do this. We do not make a living doing this. We do this to legitimately help the 40,000 Realtors here locally and across the country. Many more than that, so please tell

Ryan D’Aprile 1:01:11
TJ the question that we all decided we

D.J. Paris 1:01:13
love so definitely pass the word we we appreciate it and on behalf of Ryan and myself we say thank you for listening, and we will see everyone on the next episode and Thank you Ryan.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

For our first episode for 2019, we’re excited to announce that Ryan D’Aprile will be hosting a monthly series titled Coaching Moments!

Ryan D’Aprile personally coaches over 300 brokers at his real estate firm, D’Aprile Properties. Each month Ryan generously shares his exact systems, strategies and methods that have produced many top 1% real estate brokers. His passion is coaching, and we couldn’t be more honored to have him as a partner.

In this episode Ryan talks about best practices for starting off each workday. He explains in detail his pre-work routine which includes gratitude, meditation and journaling. Then, he pivots into his morning work routine discussing contacting your sphere of influence and tips on how to find discussion points. Lastly, I provide a suggestion about how to hire an accountability partner for $10 a week!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am the host. And we are really excited because today, by the way, welcome everyone to 2019. This is our first episode of the year. And we’re starting off with a brand new series on the call on the podcast again, once again. He did such a great job the first time we begged and pleaded him to come on more often. And so we have a new new episode, a regular episode every month we’re going to be doing this and I should tell you what it is and who is going to be doing this. So he is patiently waiting for me to finish so he can start talking. His name is Ryan de Abril. You probably know him dia pro properties, huge real estate company here in Chicago large brokerage firm. And over the years, as Ryan has built it up, they have tons of locations, great reputation, and Ryan’s favorite thing to do was actually coaching. So we went reached out to him and said, Hey, how would you like to do a monthly series on our show, similar to Carrie McCormack? Joel Schaub, but this one specifically around coaching. So Ryan, welcome. Very welcome. And thank you for offering to do this

Ryan D’Aprile 1:30
on a DJ. Thanks. Thanks for having me. And happy new year to you.

D.J. Paris 1:33
Happy New Year to you. And before you get started, I want to promote your your business. So do you have real properties, obviously great reputation. They are they were and are one of the top workplaces as the Chicago Tribune has awarded them. And so you guys should? Yeah, it was it’s it is it’s super cool. And so if you’re not familiar, and you want to learn more about what they offer, if you’re a broker looking to switch firms, give them give them a chance, look them up. And you know, Ryan goes around to all all the different offices teaching brokers as well. But I did do real properties.com. And we’ll post a link to it as well. But Ryan, thanks for coming on the show. And let us how do you want to get started with this series? Sure. So

Ryan D’Aprile 2:15
we chatted about it coaching moments. And I figured since this is a series we’re doing, why don’t we start in the beginning. And instead of jumping right into coaching and technical things and tactics that people need to do, I thought, why don’t we just start from the beginning? And why don’t we like literally start in the beginning of the day and talk about in this session, a morning routine, and a good practice that we all should incorporate into our daily life, it’s going to help us not only professionally, but personally, is what a good morning routine is. So that’s what I figured DJ, we chat with a little bit here. About what our morning routine isn’t what my morning routine looks like. Does that sound good? With you?

D.J. Paris 3:01
Yes, it’s perfect. So.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:03
So I think, and again, what I want to also point out to everybody is that you hear advice from individuals, and you think like they have it together and they they practice every single day perfectly. I would love to see I do that. But I want everybody to understand that I fall off my morning routine here and there. And you just have to have permission and understand it’s okay to not be so disciplined in doing this. And when you find yourself off course just jump back on and get back into it. Does that make sense?

D.J. Paris 3:33
Yeah, and I always love to say balance is a myth. So don’t Don’t, don’t shoot for perfection, just shoot for being able to, to re read school yourself and get as close to the balance as possible. Realize you’ll always there will always be something you’re missing. It’s okay. And just, you know, reset to center.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:53
Yeah, I found myself you know, in these past years speaking in public and to individuals on on these topics and, and then having the realization that they they actually think that I’m perfect and I have these things figured out which sure is not the case at all. So I just feel like I have to share that with everybody. Like, you know, I just came back from a family vacation. We were in Punta Cana for the week, the girls were off and we went out of town and you know, my morning routine went away and I was on social media and I saw one of our agents sharing a story about her morning routine, and she inspired me to get back onto the horse. So again, my I just don’t want to get too carried away with this. My emphasis is I’m going to go over morning routine with you. And I want everybody just you know, stick their toes in the water you know, give it a shot and it’s a practice and it gets better with time. So So myself is I like to get up early. I wouldn’t qualify myself as a morning person. I make myself a morning person I feel my energy is at its highest in the morning. I am exhausted when I get up and sometimes it’s hard to roll out of and get it going. But once I kind of get moving, I find my vibrational energy is at its highest moment early in the morning. So I usually like to get up around between five and 530 in the morning. Another reason I do that is I’m a father of three girls. And my house can be total chaos after seven o’clock in the morning. Sure, you know. And so now they’re getting the point where it’s battles for the bathrooms and everything else. So it’s a warzone. So between five and seven in the morning is nice two hours, where I can organize my day and get myself centered. So I wake up around five, between five and 530. And the first thing I like to do is I have a space in my home. And actually have two different spaces depending on the season one it is one is my bedroom. And the other one is down in our in our living area. In the wintertime, I like to go down in the living area, and I and I light a fire and sometimes I light a candle. And it’s total. It’s it’s pretty dark, and it’s silent. And it’s meant to be for myself. And I meditate, I take about 10 to 15 minutes to meditate. And I don’t know if DJ, if you’ve ever meditated it’s it’s not the easiest practice in the beginning. It’s incredibly difficult. It is. And there is an app that I use called the daily calm. Have you ever heard of it? No, that’s phenomenal. And I can’t remember the lady’s name, but she’ll guide you. So they have seven days of managing stress, seven days of gratitude, seven days of, for me, this is a this is a strong one for me, seven days of calming anxiety, I’m a personality and very hard driven person, which is a blessing. But it’s also a curse, because a lot of times that’s coupled with a high anxiety. And so I find these practices incredibly important for me to center myself in the day. And the daily calm is a wonderful app, I encourage anybody to take a look at it, I subscribe to it. Because then I have so many more, but they have a bunch of free seven day meditations. And it’s, it’s 10 to 12 minutes, it’s guided meditation. And again, you could pick the topic that you want to focus on for that week. And oh, my gosh, I cannot tell you how centered I am after I do it. And again, I’m an individual with a lot on my plate. And we all have a lot on our plates. And so if you gave yourself 10 to 12 minutes to meditate, I think it will put you in the right right mode for the day. So then the next thing I like to do is I like to do a daily reading. And I’ll won’t, it won’t be like a reading where I’m sitting down and reading a novel and I’ll spend a good half hour or an hour, I’ll just focus on two to three pages of a book that I’m reading. Now when I do that, I keep a notebook by my side. And this kind of going back to the meditating away meditating is so hard, you know, we have 30 to 50,000 thoughts a day that go right through our mind. It’s insane. So I have created the practice of keeping a notebook on my side so that when that thought comes in my head now when I’m meditating, I just observe the thought when I’m meditating. But when I’m reading, in my daily routine, I just do two three pages of the book that I’m reading. I’m reading a great book right now. By the way, have you ever heard of the self esteem prophecy?

D.J. Paris 8:16
Oh, sure. Yeah, Redfield?

Ryan D’Aprile 8:19
Yeah, so you’ve read it? Sure. Oh, I have. I’m reading it right now. It’s unbelievable. Yeah. Anyways, just loving that book anyway. So I’ll read to the three pages that in the morning. That’s what the book I’m reading right now. But as I’m reading, sometimes thoughts will come in my head. And so what I’ll do is I’ll just jot down the thought, and then I’ll get back to where I am. And what I mean by thought is something that I have to do that day. Does that make sense? Yes. So that I can be productive because I find between five and seven o’clock in the morning, I’m incredibly productive to I’m so productive, doing a few things and a few hours versus a whole bunch of things crossed an eight hour day. So I’ll write down and jot those notes.

D.J. Paris 9:00
Yeah, and just to jump in for a quick second, I could not agree more that whenever a to do comes into your head anytime day or night, but certainly in the morning, write it down, get it out of your head, immediately get it on paper or some system to where you’re not having to remember to think about it.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:18
Yeah, and it’s and you know what that is, that’s a habit, you know, and it takes time to carry to you know, to carry around a notepad like I mean, it takes time to create a habit, but if you can just try to form the habit, it’ll take time to always have a notepad with you, especially in your morning routine. It will make you so much more productive and healthy with because you’re gonna forget that thought because again, between 30 to 50,000 thoughts a day How can you how can you remember all these things going through? So um, and then I go through my gratitudes you know, this is have you ever gone to have you ever done ninja training?

D.J. Paris 9:56
I know of it. I have not done that. I’ve heard some amazing

Ryan D’Aprile 9:59
it’s Fantastic and you know, I’ve lived this lifestyle for some time I’ve gotten my first installation, we they’ve come to us a couple of times, I’ve gotten my first installation, and they helped me organize the morning routine. And I just, I love it. And so I do my three gratitudes. And I look back at the day before, and I write down three things that I’m grateful for. Now, this is incredibly important. And to some people, this might sound hokey, and for those people, that sounds hokey, I just beg of you to look at it in a different light, you have to understand that your attitude and mindset is 80 to 90% of success, agree or failure, depending on what it is. And so there is a lot to be happy about, there’s a lot to be unhappy about. And you have to pick one side, and you can’t, you know, like have your your feet on both sides of the aisle, you really have got to focus on what it is that you’re happy with. Because your belief system, your internal belief system has everything to do with the action that you take. And the action, obviously, is the results. And then the results reinforce your positive belief system or your negative belief system. And I think having the practice of writing down three things that you’re grateful for. And I tend to think about the day before, or the three things that I’m grateful for the happening for that day, really tend to put me in the right mood. Now I’ll tell you another reason why this is incredibly important. And this goes to the book that I’m reading right now, which I love so much because it’s so much my belief system, it’s it’s our energy. It’s an it’s our main form of communication is our vibrational energy. Of course, we have our language. But DJ, I don’t know about you, but have you ever walked in a room? You could feel somebody’s energy?

D.J. Paris 11:37
Oh, sure. They say the body language could be up to 90% of all communication. I mean, it’s yes.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:44
And in theory, I mean, we’re in sales, I tell all my agents that I coach and train, I’m in relationship building, that’s where I primarily focus on. I don’t focus on sales, I focus on relationship building, but we are in a function where people buy from us. And so you have to have a good vibrational energy, good body language when you are amongst people. Now I work with a huge staff, I have coworkers and everything else. So it’s really important that I walk in, and I have got a good vibrational energy that people could feel, or I could ruin the day for a lot of individuals. So it’s something to take into consideration. It’s a practice that I started a long time ago, and has just helped me I also journal. And now this is you can journal in so many different ways on what you want to do, I tend to write about my family, and keep a just a little brief history is something that my wife and I did, or one of my daughters are all through my daughters, I might be writing about what they’re doing at the time if one of them was awake or whatnot. And it’s something for me to go back and look through. And again, this might be to anybody who’s listening out there is like, what does this have to do with, with, with real estate sales, it has everything to do with real estate sales. Because if you’re not healthy, mentally and personally, and you do not have a good center, everything else is not going to fall into place for you. So you really have got to work on yourself, before you can work on all the other things. And so those are the three things that I three to four things that I do my morning routine. Then I move into my last part, which is my daily lists, and my daily lists, then focusing we’ll talk about this DJ in the in the upcoming podcasts. But my daily lists then will flow into my systems. And my system is what I use and our agents use called our dashboard and our snapshot. And this is a way where I think a lot of people in sales, it’s somewhat intangible, and they’ve got the running around and they’re busy, but they don’t really have a good form of tracking. And I think in the morning, after my morning routine is done, the last thing of my morning routine, I should say is create my daily list. And so in my dashboard, we have several different tabs. One is your network tab. The other one is your prospects tab. Another one is your active tab. And then another one is your well there’s another one called pending, but I skipped over that one during this daily tat list moment. And I go to my previous year close tab, or current year, I mean previous year because it’s January of 1919. So My Network tab, I create a pick 10. So I pick 10 individuals in my network that I’m going to make personal contact with that day. Now I’m going to just transition a little bit over into the coaching aspect of it which I’ll talk to you in in our next episode. When I reach out and connect with these individuals, I’m going to focus on them and what’s relevant in their lives. I’m not going to call them and ask them for a referral or have any line about if you know anybody looking to buy or sell. Think of me it’s It’s a pure relationship touch, but I’m going to pick 10 people, I have to be systematic about it so that I make sure they touch my network because our network is our net worth. And it’s very important to be in tune in line with your network. So I pick time people, then the next thing is, I go through and I look at my prospects, and depends on how many prospects I have. And the date, the last contact, which I notate, and I figure out, if there’s any of the prospects, I need to follow up with that week, I’ll pick those and I’ll write them that notepad DJ that I have to the right of me, like, these are the individuals I’ll connect with. And then I’ll go to the close tab now. So it’s January 2019. Okay, and so I’ll be looking at 2018. And all my close transactions, say I had 24, closed 36 Closed transactions or whatnot, I want to have personal contact at a minimum of nine times, with every closed transactions that I have in the previous year. It’s the rule is 16% of our network buys or sells a home every single year. But every single person in our network knows at least four people that are thinking about buying or selling. But the people who know and who are aware of the four people that are buying or selling are your past clients or people who bought in the past four months, because they’re talking about it, they’re moving, they’re talking to their family about it, and therefore other people are talking to them about it. And so this is the people that you want to be really in the flow with your past clients, a lot of

real estate agents, unfortunately, in other professions, after they make the sale, they move on. And it’s really the past sale that you want to nurture, make sure that they’re happy that everything that they wanted was there, and if there’s any difficulties that you are there for them. So I make sure I go through that tab and I have, we have selected dates for how many times you can contact these people and see if there are any of them or in that day or that week, they go on my list as a must to call that day. And that is that is how my morning starts. And that’s my morning routine. And I figured that’s what we focus on here. And I hope that was beneficial to you and listeners, it was a short moment with any questions DJ on that.

D.J. Paris 17:09
The first question I have, and I think I know the answer, but I want to get get your thoughts on it is, you know, hey, you know, you’re making these calls every day to your existing network. And you said, Hey, what, here’s what I’m not doing. I’m not going saying, Hey, I’m never too busy for your referrals, you know, anyone else who is buying or selling a home or detail? You’re calling them with a more personal touch? You know, and I think I know the answer of but a lot of a lot of our listeners probably haven’t built up those relationships to have a reason to call other than maybe ask for business, which I’m on the same page as you I don’t think that’s a good idea. So what do you talk about in these calls?

Ryan D’Aprile 17:46
Okay. So it’s so this is? That’s a great question. And there’s different degrees of individuals that, especially for people that are not used to relationship building like this, that you have to look at. So we have a practice of first social media, people think social media is a marketing tool. And I think I might have mentioned this in the previous pack podcast, I look at social media as r&d, research and develop relationships. Yes, great. Love, love. I’ll grab one individual, and I’ll go through the line, right. So I’ll pick, you know, DJ, and now okay, oh,

D.J. Paris 18:23
that’s so smart. I never would think to do that. That is so smart. And I’ll go

Ryan D’Aprile 18:27
through his Facebook feed, and I’ll just see what’s relevant what’s going on with and maybe I’ll look at his Instagram account, I’ll definitely go to his LinkedIn. All right, because I think people’s professionals, as is your profession important to you, DJ? For sure. Correct, right. And so it’s important for us to know, what our clients do, and I’m not going to bring it up in the conversation, but I’m going to know what they do. And I’m telling you, if you know what they do, and when I say know what they do, I mean, just where they work, what’s their function? You know, are they in sales? Are the human resources are in the operations and the financing? What’s the title of the Vice President Director just show a genuine interest in people? It just research and again, I wouldn’t bring it up in the conversation. But these are just things I want to know. And when you get into a conversation, you’ll have all this information at your disposal. Now, when I said earlier about different degrees, is somebody says, Well, I haven’t talked to that person in 10 years. I understand and that and I get making a phone call to them might be awkward. So let’s take baby steps at this. So we have DJ, you should contact everybody and network at least four times a year, once a quarter, right? So we look at this quarterly. So we say this is the first contact I’m going to make for you whatever time of the year is my first contact, I’m going to commit to make contact with you on a quarterly basis. We’ll talk about the marketing part of it after that, but we’re just talking about making personal contact. You can start with a Facebook or Instagram direct message. Okay, sure. Doesn’t have to be a phone call. It will count as a count tact. So I might say, hey, DJ just saw you got a new lammeter. So cute. I had one of those growing up. It’s been forever, man How you been hope all as well, you’re somebody I haven’t talked to in 10 years. I don’t think that’s strange. They send me know and

D.J. Paris 20:13
you can even if you’re doing it over the phone or or on an instant message through Facebook or LinkedIn, wherever you can always say, Hey, I have done a really crappy job of staying in touch. And I wanted and I wanted to do a better job or you could even own that too. You know, if you have done a crappy job of staying in touch, and that’s okay. I mean, it’s it’s the truth and acknowledging that.

Ryan D’Aprile 20:33
Well, you know, the thing is, is to I don’t want them in a DJ, when it comes to this from a different level as to it’s like, sure, you know, we all do a crappy job. So don’t, of course, to have to self deprecate, I guess even though it’s not self deprecating, but you know what I’m saying? Sure, say, Hey, I just saw a dog. It’s been forever You’re right. You’re right, then, you know, I, you know, such a such we’d love to hear from you hope all as well, and forget about it, and they send the message and I don’t think anything more about it. Now. People ask, well, what if they never respond, they never respond. It has nothing to do with you. It’s just life is so chaotic for everybody. I get text messages from friends. I get Facebook messages from friends and I haven’t responded shame on me. But I had a daughter sick at the time I had something my life blown up a business deal falling apart, and then you forgot the message even came so don’t look too much into it. Just Just do it. Don’t think just go through the process. Agree. Mel Robbins wrote a great book, The Five second rule that really would help people get over that hump of thinking too much. Have you ever read that book? The five? No, no,

D.J. Paris 21:38
I’m writing it down though. Fantastic. Great. So

Ryan D’Aprile 21:41
anyways, so so so that’s a different, you know, so that’s somebody I’ve been talking to 10 years. I’ll start with that. Okay, and then maybe the next quarter, I hit him with a text message, or even a handwritten note. Now, if it’s somebody that again, I haven’t talked to in a year or it’s been less frequently again, I look at the social media sites, I see what’s relevant. Then give them a phone call. Now, here’s what’s going on. What do you think’s gonna happen when you call somebody? DJ? AB eight out of 10 times,

D.J. Paris 22:11
you probably get voicemail. They’re gonna Yeah, exactly.

Ryan D’Aprile 22:14
And so I’m gonna say, hey, DJ, it’s Randy. April, hope all’s well, listen, no need to call me back. I was just thinking about you. And, and Sally, and I just wanted to say hello, hope you guys are all well, you know, and I just stumbled there. But I’d be better with sales live on the phone, right? Sure. But just think about you, man, hope all as well and love to catch up with you soon, someday talk to you later, and hang up. And the person is probably not going to call back, you left the voicemail. You told me just give me a call. See how you’re doing. Make a connection. And you’re on here today. So also, everybody’s so afraid of making contact with these individuals. You’re just calling them to see how they’re doing. Don’t think about you’re selling real estate? Because you’re not right now. Right? You’re developing relationships with you know, yeah,

D.J. Paris 22:58
these aren’t your prospects. These are your this is your your network. Right,

Ryan D’Aprile 23:02
exactly. Right. Yeah. So that’s how I go about that.

D.J. Paris 23:06
Yeah, I absolutely love and agree with all of that. I do have one suggestion I wanted to add to everything Ryan said. So really, what we’re talking about Ryan’s talked about throughout this episode is really building habits. And he even mentioned specifically building habits and he has his, his sort of pre work habits, and then his work habits, at least in the morning. And I will add something that I have done, I can’t take credit for inventing this idea. I learned it from a very, very great thinker named Marshall Goldsmith. But what this, he suggested, and he might be the world’s most foremost expert on leadership. But what he said is, or what he recommended is find somebody that you can, that that can ask you about your habits on a regular basis, preferably in the morning, or it could be any time and check in with you to see how you did on the previous day. So for the last two years, I pay a woman and I’m sort of embarrassed to say how little it is all she wants is like $10 a week. She calls me every morning at 730 and there’s a list of habits that I am trying to cultivate that are hard for me things like did I make my bed it’s a silly one but it’s important to me I don’t make my bed another one for a while was flossing Another one was Did I call somebody who I care about you know, friends family, that kind of thing and tell them I was thinking about them? Well, another one was that I checked my finances and I look at I reconcile all my you know, different charges etc. So anyway, I have about a list of 20 of these. One of them’s did you take the dog for a walk, write things that are good ideas that I struggled to do. And she calls me every morning at 730 or names all the time. And for 90 seconds. That’s as long as it takes. She asks me did you do X? I say yes or no, she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t have an opinion. She doesn’t care. She literally just records a little spreadsheet on Google Docs, or Google Sheets. And that’s it. We hang up and in all that does that she has no judgment. Whether and I’ve never had a perfect day in two years. Never once have I gotten yes is on all of my domains, but it keeps it in the front of my mind. I know every morning she’s going to call me. And every morning I’m going to say, Oh, I did this. No, I didn’t do that. And it just keeps things in the front of my mind. So if you can find an accountability partner, you don’t need to pay someone 10 bucks a week, although I think that’s money well spent. But you can find somebody, you know, Brian Buffini has a great story. He built his business with an accountability partner, Joe Nico. And they built a whole business together as a result of it, but they weren’t. Yeah, that’s right. And they were accountability partner. So you can have accountability partners for habits, because habits are everything. Habits are everything.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:34
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we do here is, it’s not an A daily, it’s daily, we tell everybody come into the office and work on your business. Sure, we do monthly workshops. However, there are about three to four hours, and it’s based on the dashboard. And we go through all these activities that I’m talking about right here and not the morning routine. But what comes after the morning routine. And then we have a private Facebook group that we message, and we discuss about it throughout the month. And then as the time fades, right? And then things fade, we here we are, again, it’s another time for a monthly workshop where people come in. And again, it’s a three to four hour workshop, where we’re actually sending out our annual real estate reports, we’re doing our contacts with their network, we’re following up with prospects and all those types of activities. Accountability is everything to success in this, but yeah,

D.J. Paris 26:25
don’t think that you you couldn’t benefit from it. Even if you are somebody that typically doesn’t need someone else to, to to check in with them. It helps it helps every single person on the planet, because nobody’s perfect. And the hard things that are hard for you to do, are probably always going to be hard to do, which is why accountability partners really make it a little easier.

Ryan D’Aprile 26:45
I saw something and I don’t know who it was, it might have been Darren Hardy, he did a podcast or something of that sort. And he talked about seminars, and there are so many different seminars that and you can go to and we all go to them, right? Sure. Occasionally here and there. Ninja was one of those, right, and it’s a four day seminar. And it’s great. But the statistics show and I’m off by percentages, but like, within one week, 47% of the data is lost and with for sure you’ve lost 80% of the data. And so it’s wonderful to go to them, but then you have to back it up with the daily activities and monthly workshops and whatnot to keep it relevant. And yes, we’re not going to get it all done all the time. But if you you know, you do two to two out of the four activities, three out of the four activities. You’re gonna be

D.J. Paris 27:31
lightyears ahead. Yeah, that’s a win. So So if you’re somebody that struggles with with their own accountability, you know, like, find, you know, I found somebody from the Philippines for $10 a week, and she calls me or find somebody local, or find somebody in your office or find a mentor, somebody that you can check in with on a regular basis. And there’s no shame associated with not doing things because we all don’t do everything. I mean, that’s that’s human nature, we’re not perfect. But it helps to have somebody you know, to be able to have those conversations with him, maybe somebody you can help hold accountable as well. All right. Well, well, Ryan, thank you, I think this is a great place for us to pause. We’re going to be doing these coaching moments every single month. If you are interested in either working if you’re if you happen to be a buyer or seller, you’re not a broker, and you’re interested in in looking for a good realtor, you know, anyone at April properties, there’s hundreds of brokers, you can visit the April properties.com. Also, if you are more likely a broker and you’re interested in learning what you know, being on a team or rather being at a company that offers this sort of coaching and support and very few do, but Ryan’s Ryan’s company does.

Ryan D’Aprile 28:43
Our workshops are open to agents from outside if they want to come in observe and get some help, you know, there’s no no pressure either just want to come in and and see what it looks like for a couple hours to get an idea to learn. No pressure, just come on. And just tell us where you’re coming from and just observe. Yeah, and

D.J. Paris 29:01
easiest way to get in touch with Ryan or anyone on his team. They’re extremely extraordinarily responsive. Go to D APR properties.com. We’ll have a link in the description as well. And you know, whether you’re interested in working for Ryan or just even attending one of his trainings as coaching sessions, Ryan is literally so passionate about this. This is where he focuses the majority of his time and energy is traveling around to his different offices doing this, this is what he he loves more than anything. So we’re so grateful. He’s also now making time for our for our show. So we want to make sure that if anyone’s listening and you want to learn more, you know, reach out to Ryan or his team and they’ll they’ll tell you all about what they offer. So Ryan, thanks for having me. I

Ryan D’Aprile 29:38
greatly appreciate Oh, this

D.J. Paris 29:40
is so much fun fun for us. And we’re so we’re so grateful to have you. So again, on behalf of Ryan, we say thank you for listening, we’re going to make this a great 2019 We’re gonna have Ryan on the show every month, along with some other people that we we talked to and also our regular interviews. So stay tuned. And thanks again for listening and we’ll see everyone next month. Thank Throw Thank you

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